Dust explosions–Cases, causes, consequences, and control

Explosion experiments using premixed gas in a duct have become a significant method of investigating methane–air explosions in underground coal mines. The duct sizes are far less than that of an actual mine gallery. Whether the experimental results in a duct are applicable to analyze a methane–air explosion in a practical mine gallery needed to be investigated. This issue involves the effects of scale on a gas explosion and its shockwave in a constrained space. The commercial software package AutoReaGas, a finite element computational fluid dynamics (CFD) code suitable for gas explosions and blast problems, was used to carry out the numerical simulation for the explosion processes of a methane–air mixture in the gallery (or duct) at various scales. Based on the numerical simulation and its analysis, the effect of scale on the degree of correlation with the real situation was studied for a methane–air explosion and its shockwave in a square section gallery (or duct). This study shows that the explosion process of the methane–air mixture relates to the scales of the gallery or duct. The effect of scale decreases gradually with the distance from the space containing the methane–air mixture and the air shock wave propagation conforms approximately to the geometric similarity law in the far field where the scaled distance (ratio of the propagation distance and the height (or width) of the gallery section) is over 80.

Effect of scale on the explosion of methane in air and its shockwave

Explosion relief vents on enclosures in powder-handling plants are currently designed according to technical standards that in some situations may overestimate the required vent area significantly. These technical standards sometimes do not take into account the real work conditions of industrial plants (e.g. turbulence intensity) and therefore explosion worst cases are not always foreseeable. The availability of methods either for the evaluation of explosion overpressure or sizing of relief vents, with involvement of the pre-ignition turbulence, could be very useful for a better estimate of these quantities. In this work two empirical correlations are presented: the first one allows the calculation of the flame speed and the burning velocity starting from the explosion indices K St and P max of the standardized 20-l sphere test. The second allows either the calculation of the explosion overpressure or the sizing of relief vents of an enclosure.

Correlations for flame speed and explosion overpressure of dust clouds inside industrial enclosures

Explosion behaviors of typical light metal and carbonaceous dusts induced by different ignition energies were investigated based on systematic experiments in a Siwek 20 L vessel. Comparative analysis reveals that the explosion mechanism of carbonaceous dust is the volatile combustion, whereas the mechanism for light metal dust mainly features the surface heterogeneous oxidation. Influences of ignition energy on severity and flammability limit are much more significant for carbonaceous dust than light metal, especially for the powder with less volatile. An innovative approach was introduced to derive flame thickness from the pressure–time trace. The relation between explosion induction time and combustion duration of ignitor was also analyzed. Results show inappropriate ignition energy will cause under-/over-driving in the thermodynamic/kinetic characteristic measurements. In this way, a dimensionless parameter pressure ratio was introduced to evaluate the under-driving, while two methods by using flame thickness and induction time respectively, were proposed to evaluate over-driving. To improve the accuracy of dust explosion tests, authors advocate that explosion severity determination should be conducted at the critical ignition energy. Moreover, a comparison between the European and Chinese flammability limit determination procedures was also conducted, indicating that EN 14034-3 is suitable for light metal but not for carbonaceous, while GB/T 16425 appears to be slightly conservative for both carbonaceous and light metal dusts.

Experiment-based investigations on the effect of ignition energy on dust explosion behaviors

In this study, experiments of explosions and flame characteristics in methane/air mixtures are performed in a 10-m3 vessel. Pressure gauges and a high-speed camera are utilized to record the pressure trajectories and the flame propagation process of ignition growth. The experimental results show that the maximum value of overpressure and the maximum rate of the explosion pressure rise are 0.596 MPa and 1.82 MPa/s for the methane (9.5% in volume)/air mixture at atmospheric conditions, respectively. Both values are higher than for other mixtures with different compositions. The results also indicate that the overpressure from the large-scale vessel in this study is lower than that of a smaller apparatus (e.g., 5-L closed cylindrical vessel). This difference occurs due to the cooling effect and because the reflected sonic disturbances by the vessel wall affect the explosion process and weaken the energy during the pressure attenuation stage, thus rendering the value of overpressure in the large-scale apparatus lower than in the tiny cylindrical vessels. The maximum overpressure is observed at 0.75 m for C = 7% (“C” means the methane concentration) and 9.5% but at 1.3 m for C = 5%, 6.5%, 11.2%, and 13%. These results indicate that methane/air is an easier means to generate overpressure and that the overpressure is higher near the stoichiometric condition. Based on the analysis of the flame propagation process, the mean value of the flame speed of methane (C = 9.5%)/air is calculated to be approximately 2.43 m/s because the nonuniformity of the chemical reaction at the flame front results in a maximum fluctuation of flame speed of approximately 28.5%. The flame thickness (θ) of methane (C = 9.5%)/air fluctuates between 9.84 and 10.95 mm, with a mean value of 10.53 mm. © 2014 American Institute of Chemical Engineers Process Saf Prog 33: 362–368, 2014

Explosion and flame characteristics of methane/air mixtures in a large-scale vessel

Experiments were performed on the influence of pre-ignition turbulence on the course of vented gas and dust explosions. A vertical cylindrical explosion chamber of approximately 100 l volume and a length-to-diameter ratio (l/d) of 4.7 consisting of a steel bottom segment and three glass sections connected by steel flanges was used to perform the experiments. Sixteen small fans evenly distributed within the chamber produced turbulent fluctuations from 0 to 0.45 m/s. A Laser-Doppler-anemometer (LDA) was used to measure the flow and turbulence fields. During the experiments the pressure and in the case of dust explosions the dust concentration were measured. In addition, the flame propagation was observed by a high-speed video camera. A propane/nitrogen/oxygen mixture was used for the gas explosion experiments, while the dust explosions were produced by a cornstarch/air mixture. It turned out that the reduced explosion pressure increased with increasing turbulence intensity. This effect was most pronounced for small vents with low activation pressures, e.g. for bursting disks made from polyethylene foil. In this case, the overpressure at an initial turbulence of 0.45 m/s was twice that for zero initial turbulence.

Andreas Geißler

Papers

Experiments on the influence of pre-ignition turbulence on vented gas and dust explosions