Dust explosion quantitative risk management for nontraditional dusts

The current paper describes an approach for dust explosion quantitative risk management of the following nontraditional particulate fuel systems: (i) nanomaterials having particles with dimensions between 1 and 100 nm, (ii) flocculent (fibrous) materials characterized by a length-to-diameter ratio rather than a particle diameter, and (iii) hybrid mixtures consisting of a combustible dust and a flammable gas (or a combustible dust wetted with a flammable solvent). Experimental results are considered as input to a quantitative risk management framework so as to provide a comprehensive procedure to analyze, assess and control the likelihood and consequences of explosions of nontraditional dusts. Using concepts drawn from previous studies, the framework consists of three main components: (i) a new combined safety management protocol, (ii) use of the CFD (computational fluid dynamics) software DESC (Dust Explosion Simulation Code) and FTA (Fault Tree Analysis) to determine explosion consequences and likelihood, respectively, and (iii) application of the hierarchy of controls (inherent, engineered and procedural safety) to achieve residual risk reduction.