Chemical Design | Get Up-to-Date on Explosion Venting Requirements | Chemical Processing

By -
In Chemical Design, written by our friends at Farr, a good article for those in the chemical processing and other industries, on current explosion venting requirements:

Chemical Design | Get Up-to-Date on Explosion Venting Requirements | Chemical Processing

Operations in many chemical plants can pose the risk of dust explosions. One common potential source of such explosions is a dust collection system. It’s therefore timely to examine the latest complete revision of the “National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) 68 Standard on Explosion Protection by Deflagration Venting” to see what’s changed and how this impacts future dust-collection decisions. The standard, which can be purchased online via the NFPA web site ( http://www.nfpa.org ), applies to all closed-vessel dry-collection systems such as cartridge-style dust collectors. So, here, we’ll share our understanding of five key implications of NFPA 68 as they relate to cartridge dust-collection systems.

1. NFPA 68 has changed from a “guideline” to a “standard.” It provides mandatory, and much more stringent, requirements for collection applications involving explosive dusts. This echoes actions by the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), which recently launched a National Emphasis Program focusing on the safe handling of combustible dusts ( http://www.osha.gov/pls/oshaweb/owadisp.show_document?p_table=DIRECTIVES&p_id=3830 ). OSHA defines combustible dusts as “organic or metal dusts that are finely ground into very small particles, fibers, chips, and/or flakes…. Some of the industries in which combustible dusts are particularly prevalent include agriculture, chemical, textile, forest and the furniture industry.”

Simply stated, it’s the NFPA’s role to set the standard and OSHA’s and local authorities’ role to enforce it.

Read more at the above link.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Fire Triangle, Fire Tetrahedron and Dust Explosion Pentagon

By -
Image
Fire Triangle From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Jump to: navigation , search The fire triangle. The fire triangle or combustion triangle is a simple model for understanding the ingredients necessary for most fires . [1] It has been replaced in the fire fighting and protection industry partially by the fire tetrahedron (see below). The triangle illustrates a fire requires three elements: heat , fuel , and an oxidizing agent (usually oxygen ). The fire is prevented or extinguished by removing any one of them. A fire naturally occurs when the elements are combined in the right mixture. Without sufficient heat , a fire cannot begin, and it cannot continue. Heat can be removed by the application of a substance which reduces the amount of heat available to the fire reaction. This is often water, which requires heat for phase change from water to steam. Introducing sufficient quantities and types of powder or gas in the flame reduces the amount of heat available for t...
Read more

Are Spices Flammable?

By -
Image
Is Cinnamon Flammable? - Science - ChefSteps Made from the dried bark of Cinnamomum verum , a tree indigenous to Sri Lanka, cinnamon's exotic perfume and subtle flavor come from its two major components: cinnamaldehyde and eugenol. These two chemicals are volatile, meaning they readily vaporize at temperatures comfortable to humans, which is in fact why cinnamon is so fragrant. But those same vapors are also highly combustible (indeed, combustion only happens in the presence of vapors), making cinnamon a highly flammable material under the right conditions. Now a cloud of cinnamon dust isn’t the kind of thing most people would consider dangerous, but add enough heat and you’ll quickly have an expanding ball of fire known as a dust explosion. For dealing with this situation, we can only recommend a good pair of running shoes. In fact, the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration issues warnings about cinnamon explosions in food manufacturing plants....
Read more

Functional Safety Audit vs. Functional Safety Assessment

By -
From Chemical Processing Don’t Confuse a Functional Safety Audit with a Functional Safety Assessment Understand the critical differences between the two essential evaluations By John Walkington, ABB Safety Lead Competency Centre Apr 19, 2017 Many people working in safety instrumented system (SIS) project development, execution, operation and maintenance treat a functional safety audit (FS Audit) and a functional safety assessment (FSA) as one and the same. So, based on this assumption, they simply ensure that such an activity is undertaken and perhaps signify the need to perform this evaluation at some point when it appears as a milestone on the project schedule. Moreover, often they call upon someone working on the project, who may or may not have had some previous experience in quality auditing, to deliver this audit/assessment. However, this is not a reasonable approach because the concepts for the audit and assessment markedly differ. An FS Audit provides...
Read more