Miracles don’t happen every day. But one did this past week in our own Jiangsu Province, when a worker miraculously survived being splashed across the chest with molten aluminium at a temperature of no less than 660 degrees Celsius.
The accident took place on 9 January, at a die casting factory the city of Nantong in Jiangsu. There, worker, Qin Yukuan, was carrying out his daily duties as normal when the blast of molten aluminium struck without warning.
Qin was rushed to hospital where doctors discovered the aluminium had solidified inside his chest.
Under any other circumstances, such an incident would have without doubt been fatal. Yet, something was smiling down on Qin that fateful day.
After surgery, dozens of aluminum pieces of varying sizes had been one by one taken out of his heart, reported The Paper earlier today.
Some of the solid globules had come to within just one millimetre of Qin’s heart. Amazingly, the vital organ suffered no serious damage.
Surveillance camera footage of the accident taking place, which can be seen via this link, may be distressing to some viewers.
Qin can be seen being splashed with what appears at first sight to be a steam-like substance. All the while, a coworker who was facing away from the blast of aluminium, looks on as if mystified by why Qin is desperately removing the many layers of winter clothing on his upper body.
That Qin was able to do so and was not immediately knocked to the floor by the blast to face imminent death is nothing short of a miracle.
Aluminium Under High Pressure
The manufacturing process that is aluminium die casting produces accurately defined, smooth and textured metal parts, with end uses in a variety of sectors, including aerospace, automotive and commercial transportation. To achieve such precision parts, the molten aluminium is forced into the mold under high pressure.
The as-yet unexplained release of the aluminum under high pressure was the cause of last week’s near-fatal accident. Qin’s condition in hospital remains stable.
Accidents involving molten aluminium are thankfully relatively rare. That said, just last month, in Lancaster of Pennsylvania, USA, at least one person was taken to hospital after a molten aluminium explosion at the Arconic Mill Products facility in Manheim Township, reported LNP | LancasterOnline at the time.
