Lessons Learned: Benzene Distillation Vapor Explosion and Fire

We present here a narrative of an incident that occurred in chemistry laboratory while purifying benzene using distillation apparatus. The resulted injury to graduate student and fire caused approximately $3.5 million damage including repair/refurbishment costs. Unfortunately, due the extent fire, direct cause could not be determined. lessons learned from this have potentially prevented altogether, or at least reduced damage, include performing risk assessment both experiment situation time, maintaining proper housekeeping lab, updated accurate chemical inventory, checking on long duration experiments, always calling for back-up, ensuring lab buildings are up code, wearing personal protective equipment, 911 emergency.