Dust Explosions During Fire Fighting

Up-to-date and thorough coverage of the causes, repercussions, and prevention of dust explosions and fires by one of the most well-respected environmental scientists and worker safety litigation specialists in the world This handy volume is a ready “go to” reference for the chemical engineer, plant manager, process engineer, or chemist working in industrial settings where dust explosions could be a concern, such as the process industries, coal industry, metal industry, and others. Though dust explosions have been around since the Earth first formed, and they have been studied and written about since the 1500s, they are still an ongoing concern and occur almost daily somewhere in the world, from bakeries to fertilizer plants. Dust explosions can have devastating consequences, and, recently, there have been new industrial standards and guidelines that reflect safer, more reasonable methods for dealing with materials to prevent dust explosions and resultant fires. This book not only presents these new developments for engineers and managers, it offers in-depth coverage of the subject, starting with a complete overview of dust—how it forms, when it is in danger of exploding, and how this risk can be mitigated—as well as a general overview of explosions and the environments that foster them. Dust Explosion and Fire Prevention Handbook covers individual industries, such as metal and coal; offers an appendix that outlines best practices for preventing dust explosions and fire and how these risks can be systematically mitigated by these implementations; and incorporates a handy glossary of terms for easy access, not only for the veteran engineer or chemist, but for the student or new hire. This ready reference is one of the most useful texts that an engineer or chemist could have at their side. With so many accidents still occurring in industry today, this must-have volume pinpoints the most common, sure-fire ways for engineers, scientists, and chemists working with these hazardous materials to go about their daily business safely, efficiently, and profitably, with no extraneous tables or theoretical treatises.

The interest of the media in dust explosions increased considerably following two major grain-elevator disasters in the United States in 1979. However, these were not isolated incidents and were statistically unusual only in the high loss of life involved. Any oxidizable material that is dispersed in fine powder form may be explosive, and ignition sources with sufficient energy to ignite a dust cloud are easily produced in normal industrial processing. Dust fires and minor incidents are not uncommon in many industries, but fortunately the combination of events and circumstances that must coincide for a large-scale explosion arise only rarely. Nevertheless, this is often more by luck than by good management and many potentially hazardous situations are common in industry. An explosive dust cloud and the circumstances in which it can ignite are not as simple to define as the equivalent situation in gases or flammable vapors. A large number of definitions and experimental tests have been devised to characterize the explosibility of dusts and ignition sources. The aim of this book is to provide a guide describing conditions in industry that could lead to dust explosions and the means to avoid them. Ignition sources and the way in which they can arise in powder processing are discussed and illustrated by case histories of reported incidents. The methods by which the potential hazards of a process or product can be evaluated are described, with special attention paid to the interpretation of the results of the different experimental methods.

Providing many lessons learned from past silo fires coupled with in-depth knowledge from experts, this book explains current prevention measures in detail -- helping to prevent future damage. It covers numerous types of fire detection devices and fire fighting equipment, backed by extensive data tables listing fire and explosion characteristics of bulk materials, color photographs of silos on fire and documentation of firefighters' actions. In addition, diagrams and formulas as well as pre-prepared check lists are included for risk assessment and fire fighting actions. Possibly lifesaving reading for chemists in industry, engineers, chemical engineers, health officers, environmental consultants, instructors in the chemical industry, as well as chemicals suppliers and safety officers.

Process safety is a disciplined framework for managing the integrity of operating systems and processes handling hazardous substances. Continued occurrence of major losses have had a significant impact on the industry's approaches to modern process safety. Consequently, the process safety management is now globally recognized as the primary approach for establishing the level of safety in operations required to manage high-hazard processes. With this in mind, and also due to the evolution in regulatory thinking that integrated traditional occupational safety with process safety, several process safety methods were developed by industry associations around the world. Although all these methods share the same basic objectives, the number of program elements may vary depending on the criteria used. Consequently, selecting the best method to chemical process safety could be challenging due to the existence of different options. I decided to write this project to address this challenge by provide an overview of the most important recent advancements and contributions in chemical process safety. The project helps researchers and professionals to obtain guidance on the selection and practice of chemical process safety methods. The main features of this volume are: To acquaint the reader/researcher with the fundamentals of the process safety To provide most recent advancements and contributions in the given topic from practical point of view To provide readers views/opinions of the expert in each topic To provide guidance on the practice of the given topic The selection of the author(s) of each chapter from among the leading researchers and/or practitioners for each given topic