An Experimental Investigation into the Dust Explosion of Bulk Solids

Abstract

This paper presents an experiment investigation on dust explosion. Dust is common in process industries that manufacture, store and handle particulate material. More than 70% of dusts processed in industries are combustible. Dust explosion regularly occurs in process industries, cause serious industry damages and live loss. Dust explosion was found in literature since 1785 and the records are available from the early 20th century. Lot of experiments were done to control explosions occurring in coal mines and other processing industries but still explosions are occurring in different countries due to different dusts, these accidents disclose that there are still some technical problems unsolved. Industrial technology in India is similar to developed countries but information relevant to dust explosion occurring in India is almost negligible because in most accidents that occurs in India the broad term explosion is used and recorded while the type of explosion goes unpublicized. It is impossible to eliminate dust explosion but it can be reduced by using different methods. Dust explosion can be prevented if technical safety parameters of dust are known. Characteristics of bulk solids depend upon environmental conditions. Indian dusts are different from dusts of other countries in terms of moisture content, ash content, minerals etc. It is observed that lot of work has been done in other countries on dust explosion characteristics but a limited work has been reported on Indian dusts explosion characteristics. So it has been decided to investigate the dust explosion characteristics of Indian dust. In this study characteristic of wheat husk, wood dust and coal dust such as Pmax, Tmax, minimum and maximum concentration required for explosion has been calculated. Characteristics for wheat husk, wood dust has been calculated for particle size less than 300 µm, coal dust characteristics are calculated for particle size less than 53µm and at105 µm, in 5000 cm3 container. Further, an empirical model for explosion pressure has been developed.