The explosion took place in 1988. The incident involved a fire inside of a Monolithic Dome in Alabama, capable of holding one million bushels of grain. This dome, 150' in diameter and 75' in height had a hopper that sloped toward its bottom, making its center 20' deeper. A tunnel and conveyor system at the base of the hopper removed grain from the dome.

There are two scenarios of how the fire started. The first is fire started in the tunnel where gases built up, as the grain deteriorated or fermented, but was not properly eliminated. There is also speculation that the fire was started by welders making repairs to the tunnel. At that point, the dome contained 300,000 bushels of grain. The fire had been going for 60 days, one semi-truck load of carbon dioxide had already been injected into the dome to extinguish the fire. However, it was too little too late.

Before the fire could be extinguished, the grain exploded. The dome’s top, acting like a relief valve, blew off, creating a skylight of about 100' in diameter. The sound of the explosion woke people as far as four miles away. But here’s the key part about this whole incident: the dome contained the explosion. Escaping gas sucked the debris back into the dome so that lives were not lost and other property was not damaged.

The debris being sucked back into the dome is much like when you cover the hole in one end of a spool of thread with a scrap of paper and then blow through the opposite hole. The paper will stay in place. The harder you blow, the tighter the paper will cling to the spool, because the air going around the paper will suck it down. In this case, that same principle accounts for the dome containing the explosion.

While explosions are not typical in domes or silos they do happen. Every precaution is taken by Dome Technology to eliminate these types of problems. This article is to inform the readers about an actual event and to explain that an explosion happened in Alabama. I feel the situation was made a safer by a dome built by Dome Technology, a superior strength structure.

Please draw your own conclusions and I invite all questions.

Click the attachment to see pictures.

Explanation of pictures:

Pic 1: is the before picture. The dome has a colored stripe up the middle for appearance.

Pic 2: is the after picture. The visible damage to the air form was not caused by the explosion. Rather, there was a huge grabber crane that was removing the rebar and concrete that was sucked back into the dome. They were not (unblamingly) careful and damaged the exterior.

Pic 3: is the top view after the explosion. It speaks for itself.

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dome technology (ZIP)

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