Awareness Training Goals - Salinas Valley Ammonia Safety Day

Ammonia Safety Day
Workbook Answers - Ask SAL Monia – Chemical and Physical Traits
Meet SAL Monia – Some Friendly and Live Saving Advice
1. What is the significance of SAL’s name? What are his “two very different sides”?
Self Alarming Liquid – SAL is the world’s most popular chemical – refrigerant preserve food, fertilizer
and produce food, treat water, clean floors helps in making many important products – paint to ceramics;
and environmentally friendly natural refrigerant of choice; also a real “challenging character – a real
stinker”!
2. Why is SAL a “challenging character” to humans; a real “stinker”?
Feared by those who don’t know or understand him and easy to detect when he gets free; dangerous to the
ignorant
3. What is SAL’s warning to those of you who work on ammonia systems? What’s he say about you
“messing with the system”?
All pipelines pressurized and double check position of upstream/downstream; handle those valves with
care; If you don’t know then don’t go!
4. SAL mentions that when operators don’t respect him and work on his system without PPE or
proper SOP he “spits out an aerosol spray with a freeze burn” – What’s the lesson in that
statement?
SAL can blind or asphyxiate those caught in his trail…be ready, wear PPE, and know the status of the
system BEFORE you work on it! Keep clear of the system when you don’t know what is going on.
Chemical and Physical Characteristics Get to know SAL
5. Why is SAL “so darn thirsty”? Where does he find water? What forms when he mixes with water?
Anhydrous ammonia means that he has no water and he wants water…he’s very thirsty! He will find it
anywhere and humans have plenty – eyes, mouth, nose and even in “places that human’s find
uncomfortable” like the GROIN! He mixes to form ammonium hydroxide which is caustic and burns.
6. What are the four types of ammonia releases that emergency responders should be aware of?
Liquid, aerosol dense gas or aerosol stream, or as an “invisible vapor”
7. What happens when you raise SAL’s temperature? What happens to his temperature when you
lower his pressure? Why does this happen? At what temperature does SAL sleep? Can he get
colder than his boiling point? Why?
Raise temperature and pressure raises correspondingly; lower pressure and the vapor spreads and cools
down; because heat energizes the ammonia atoms and makes them move faster – when confined in a tank
or vessel this builds up pressure; when open to the atmosphere the increase in heat speeds the
vaporization, the temperature of the liquid and the vapor will cool to below boiling point to near -100
degrees F.
8. How does SAL become more powerful? When is he more dangerous? What gives SAL power to
expand? What’s it take to contain SAL? What happens when emergency response personnel cover
him with a tarp?
©ASTI – www.ammonia-safety.com – August 2008 29