Industrial Fire Prevention

From our friends at Fauske: 5 Things Every Plant Manager Needs to Know About Combustible Dusts Posted by Zachary Hachmeister on 05.08.19 By Zachary Hachmeister, Chief Operating Officer, Fauske & Associates, LLC Combustible Dust is Fuel This may sound obvious, but it’s really important. You need to think of dust deposits on surfaces or dust leakage from equipment as uncontrolled fuel in your facility. This, of course, is only true for dusts that are combustible. The reason this is so important is that it will help shift you and your employees’ perspective on dust from a nuisance that reflects a lack of cleanliness to a potential hazard that is putting you, your co-workers, and your assets at risk. (This slight shift in perspective can translate to an increased awareness of combustible dust hazards and by doi...

Combustible Dust: From Sparks to Fires to Explosions - Identifying Precursors to Catastrophic Events  From OHS-- Occupational Health and Safety Since the 2009 introduction of OSHA’s proposed combustible dust rulemaking following the 2008 Imperial Sugar Refinery catastrophic dust explosion, a regulation has not been finalized. In the interim, Congress has acted with the February 2013 reintroduction of a proposed combustible dust bill, “Worker Protection Against Combustible Dust Explosions and Fires Act (H.R. 691),” which directs OSHA to immediately publish an interim combustible dust regulation. A problem arises in both the proposed OSHA combustible dust rulemaking process and reintroduced combustible dust bill in that neither acknowledges the multitude of “near miss” combustible dust related fires, precursors to catastrophic dust explosions and flash fires. In 2013 a preliminary analysis by the Combustible Dust Policy Institute (CDPI) of National Fire Incident Rep...