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The hazards of pork scratchings
Keith Wilson
Summary
One person died when a high speed grinder used to
pulverize liquid nitrogen cooled pork rinds exploded
violently scattering metal fragments throughout the
work room. The cause was related to a change in process
conditions.
Incident
Finely ground, baked pork rinds (sometimes found in
pubs as pork scratchings) were used as filler in food
products such as sausages. To make the pork rinds easier
to grind they were cooled in liquid nitrogen to make
them brittle. The process involved adding liquid
nitrogen to the rinds in a semi-open-topped vessel for a
short time, then transferring them to the bowl of an
electrically driven high speed grinder where they were
reduced to the required particle size.
Batch processing times were normally short, of the
order of minutes, but on the day of the incident the rinds
had been left in the cooling vessel during a meal break.
After the break the rinds were still cold and were
transferred, with no further liquid nitrogen addition, to
the grinder. It was soon after switching on the grinder
that a violent explosion occurred, shattering the metal
bowl and blasting fragments around the workroom with
sufficient force to fatally injure a young employee.
Metallurgical examination of the fragments did not point
to cold brittle fracture as the failure mechanism.
Cause
The investigation concluded that the explosion occurred
when the fat in the rinds became oxygen enriched to the
point where the energy generated by the rotating blades of
the grinder was sufficient to cause the rinds to detonate.
At first sight the assumption was that the
evaporating liquid nitrogen would provide an inert
LOSS PREVENTION BULLETIN 191
21
 Institution of Chemical Engineers 2006
atmosphere within the grinder sufficient to prevent any
degradation or oxidation of the rinds. Under normal
circumstances this was likely to be the case.
The accepted explanation for the incident lay in the
difference in boiling points of liquid nitrogen and liquid
oxygen (⫺196°C and ⫺183°C respectively). Atmospheric
oxygen with its higher boiling point will condense in the
colder, lower boiling point liquid nitrogen. It will
continue to do so as the liquid nitrogen evaporates,
effectively oxygen-enriching the remaining liquid
nitrogen. The oxygen will only start to evaporate once
the nitrogen has gone and the liquid temperature
increases. In this incident the concentrating liquid
oxygen would be likely to be absorbed into the fatty
structure of the rinds making them highly susceptible to
violent ignition — an often-demonstrated phenomenon
using flammable materials such as cream crackers or
cotton wool dipped in liquid oxygen.
Comment
This incident illustrates that secondary hazards of materials
may be overlooked or not understood in a risk assessment.
In this case the obvious hazards of handling cryogenic
liquids and the asphyxiant properties of nitrogen were
understood. In normal operation, where cooling cycles
were short or exposed liquid surfaces minimized, gradual
oxygen enrichment would not be an issue (even if it were
recognized as a potential hazard in the process) nor would
it be if non-flammable materials were involved (there are
obvious exceptions where some metals will ignite in the
presence of pure liquid or very high pressure oxygen). It
was only in the abnormal process conditions of this
incident that it became important.
Anticipating the unexpected can be difficult even for
practitioners. It is likely to be even more so for smaller
enterprises (like this food processing factory) where
expertise lies elsewhere. This incident may act as a
timely reminder not to discount secondary hazards and
to be mindful that changes in process conditions can
have unexpected and sometimes fatal consequences.