Industrial Fire Prevention

From Woodworking Network Was Extra Fine Wood Dust Factor in Mill Fires and Explosions? By Bill Esler October 10, 2015 | 8:17 pm EDT Aerial photograph of the east side of the Babine sawmill. The large yellow arrow indicates the easterly direction of the explosion’s  expansion from the point of origin. Source: WorkSafeBC incident  report, January 2012. BURNABY, BC - A trend to finer wood dust - resulting from dryer beetle killed wood and finer-kerf saw blades - may have contributed to a series of fires and plant explosions in British Columbia mills and wood products factories. A 2012 internal memo from WorkSafeBC, released through a Freedom of Information request, also predicted industry resistance to wood dust control rules  "if an enforcement strategy is pursued at this time." WorkSafeBC circulated an internal document stating the agency was concerned that an enforcement strategy to address wood dust in sawmill...

FromPowder/Bulk Solids Four Steps to Control Combustible Dust in Your Plant Hi-Vac manifold piping system to help clean up chips and cuttings from machine centers According to the Spring 2015 Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs report, combustible dust explosions have been an OSHA focus for years. The U.S. Chemical Safety Board reported in late 2006 that 199 workers had died in 2005 alone as a result of combustible dust events. OSHA has increasingly focused on how to prevent explosions caused by combustible dust. Together with the U.S. Department of Labor, OSHA published a bulletin in November 2014 titled, “Combustible Dust in Industry: Preventing and Mitigating the Effects of Fire and Explosions.” According to the bulletin, there are three components of a dust explosion, and those are dust, an ignition source (usually heat), and oxygen in the air that helps the fire spread rapidly. Together with hazard assessment, OSHA suggests in the bul...

From Powder/Bulk Solids NFPA Introduces NFPA 652 Combustible Dust Standard July 27, 2015 Every year, destructive and deadly dust-related fires and explosions affect a wide range of industries around the world. In the United States alone, 50 combustible dust accidents occurred between 2008 and 2012. To manage the dust-related fire, flash fire, and explosion hazards in industries that use dust collection and handling equipment, or have processes that may generate combustible dust, the  National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) introduces the first-time NFPA 652: Standard on the Fundamentals of Combustible Dust. This important new Standard serves a wide variety of industries including chemical, wood  processing, metals, and agricultural. In addition to providing new general requirements for managing combustible dust fire and explosion hazards, NFPA 652 directs users to NFPA's appropriate industry- or commodity-specific standards, such as NFPA 61: Prevent...

From Powder/Bulk Solids ACC Publishes 2015 Guide to Chemical Industry The American Chemistry Council (ACC) has issued its 2015 edition of the Guide to the Business of Chemistry, a detailed economic profile of the chemistry industry and its contributions to the U.S. and world economies. American chemistry is the global leader in production, providing over fifteen percent of the world’s chemicals and representing 14 percent of all U.S. exports. It is also one of America’s largest manufacturing industries, an $801 billion enterprise providing 804,000 high-paying jobs. For every one chemistry industry job, 6.3 others are generated in other sectors of the economy, including construction, transportation, and agriculture, totaling nearly six million chemistry-dependent jobs. “The business of chemistry is the building block for everything around us,” said the publication’s lead author, ACC chief economist Kevin Swift. “Supporting nearly 25 percent of the U.S. GDP, the b...

From The National Law Review OSHA Clarifies Enforcement Guidance on Combustible Dust posted on: Wednesday, June 10, 2015 The Occupational Safety and Health Administration , responding to a request of the National Forest and Paper Association , has updated its compliance guidance on how inspectors are to evaluate accumulated levels of low bulk-density combustible dusts for enforcement purposes. The guidance  was released by OSHA on May 22. The Association asked OSHA to explain to the agency’s inspectors that they should consider the unique characteristics of a dust ‒ such as its bulk density ‒ instead of basing assessments on whether dust accumulation simply surpasses 1/32 of an inch (about the diameter of a paper clip), an OSHA spokesperson told Bloomberg BNA. OSHA’s compliance guidance for its seven-year-old National Emphasis Program (NEP) for combustible dust references 1/32-inch dust accumulation levels. However, OSHA made clear in the latest g...

From our friends at Baghouse.com How to Avoid Undersizing a Baghouse Dust Collection System Dust collector OEMs constantly try to come in with bids lower than competitors. In an attempt to do so, some baghouse manufacturers offer undersized systems. This article discusses what customers can do to avoid accepting a bid for an inadequately-sized baghouse dust collection system. By Dominick DalSanto Dust Collection Expert & Sales Director Baghouse.com ”I’m sorry, but the other supplier came in lower than you. We went with their proposal over yours.” I think there are few things I hate hearing more than those words in my position in baghouse sales. I can respect a client who has found a better deal on a comparable system. But I am upset when I hear that my competition came in with a bid lower than mine by recommending a grossly undersized system. As a sales professional, this particularly exasperates me as I feel these OEMs abuse the level of trust pl...

From Occupational Health & Safety  Combustible Dust Vacuums Save Lives and Property Implementing a housekeeping routine to mitigate combustible dust minimizes explosion risk. By David Kennedy / May 01, 2015 According to a 2012 report by the NFPA, there were an estimated 8,600 structural fires reported to U.S. fire departments each year at industrial or manufacturing properties between 2006 and 2010. Dust, fiber, or lint (including sawdust) accounted for 12 percent of the items first ignited, just behind flammable or combustible liquids and gases, which topped the list at 13 percent. When fugitive dust is unchecked, these fires can quickly escalate into catastrophic secondary dust explosions, causing devastating injury, death, and property damage. Shocking cases like the Imperial Sugar dust explosion that injured 42 and killed 14 and the Kunshan Zhongrong Metal Products explosion in China last August that killed 146 people stand out most in the public eye, ...