DSS014: Fire Hazards in Waste and Recycling Facilities with Ryan Fogelman

In this episode of the Dust Safety Science Podcast, we talk about waste and recycling facility fires and fire protection with Ryan Fogelman, V.P. of Strategic Partnerships at Fire Rover, a company that develops and constructs remote monitoring fire detection elimination solutions. During this interview, we review what a waste and recycling facility looks like and answer the following questions:

What are some of the hazards involved?
What does fire protection look like in this industry?
What needs to be done to prevent a fire?
What needs to be done to catch a fire at the incipient stage?

We also examine how combustible dust may be a potential risk in different areas of waste and recycling processing and how some of the lessons that Ryan has learned from his incident reporting can apply to the field of combustible dust and powder handling.

What is a Waste and Recycling Facility?

Ryan explained that the definition of a waste and recycling facility varies, but the goal is to avoid throwing material into a landfill if it can be reused somewhere else. Everyone is familiar with curbside recycling, but there is also the recycling of materials from construction and demolition sites. Such materials include:

Plastics
Metal
Organics

With a typical material recycling facility, or MRF, trucks bring the material to be recycled to a staging floor, or tip floor, and deposit it. Bulldozers take the material and put it on a series of conveyors that carry it through an assembly of short lines before it is processed by baling equipment.

With construction and demolition recycling, the facilities can be indoor or outdoor types where huge piles of waste are sorted on larger equipment. Most of them have ceilings ranging from 30 to 50 feet in height. They may have sprinkler systems around 40 to 50 feet off the ground.

Fire and Dust Explosion Hazards in Waste and Recycling Facilities

Traditional hazards in these facilities include aerosol cans, gas tanks, and propane tanks. One growing hazard in both curbside and construction recycling is lithium-ion batteries, which have caused smoldering fires and explosions. They present an increased level of risk because they’re more difficult to control: while gas tanks can be emptied, lithium-ion batteries of all sizes create their own oxygen so they can start fires anywhere: in screens, in conveyors, and at any point of the process.

With combustible dust safety, eliminating ignition sources is one of the primary solutions. Lithium-ion batteries are an ignition source at any point in that assembly line which complicates any fire or explosion prevention approach.

With metal recycling, titanium, magnesium, and a lot of precious metals are being processed, which can pose a combustible dust hazard. Fertilizers are also created from recycled materials. When the facilities accumulate dust on their surfaces, it presents a risk, even when managers try to spray areas down or use misters.

An example of a dust explosion incident in a recycling facility occured in 2010. In this incident a metal recycling facility in New Cumberland, West Virginia was mixing titanium and zirconium powder received from a waste recycling facility when the mixer arm hit the walls, causing a spark and igniting a dust explosion. According to the US Chemical Safety Board Investigation report, three people were killed and one person was injured. Incidentally, the same facility had fatal explosions and fires involving metal dust in 1995 and 2006.

How Prevalent Are Fires in Waste and Recycling Facilities?

As he was putting together his annual report on waste and recycle facility fires, Ryan observed that in the past 12 months (September 2017-August 2018), there have been 377 unique reported waste and recycling facility fire incidents in the US and Canada. Given the trend of under-reporting, he estimated the total number at over 1800.

In the same time period the year before (September 2016-August 2017) there were 271 waste and recycling facility fire incidents in North America.

Using the Environmental Research & Education Foundations data published in 2016, Ryan noted that there were 3,913 recycling facilities and 81 WtE (waste to energy) facilities, which would equate to 40% of waste and recycling facilities having had a fire incident in the past 12 months. The California Product Stewardship Council noted that 86% of the facilities that responded to its survey had at least two fires in the last two years.

This is why, in addition to better understanding the prevalence of dust explosions and fires in waste and recycling facilities, Ryan is focusing on removing the stigma from talking about it. Incipient fires are being put out all time and don’t get the attention that major fires or explosions do. However every incident, no matter how large, presents an opportunity for learning if people will talk about it and make others aware that these hazards exist.

The Advantage of Early Detection

The goal at Ryan’s company, Fire Rover is to ensure that a major fire incident does not occur. The company has over 100 installations and no major fires in any of the facilities it protects. According to Ryan, this is achieved by applying corrective action at the incipient stage.

The human eye can only see smoke and some equipment can see flashes but the Fire Rover system is monitored by a person who analyzes on-site data and distinguishes a genuine abnormality from thousands of false alarms. They can then notify first responders where it is located in the facility, what stage it is at, and how big it is.

With a traditional approach, you don’t normally see smoke until three or four minutes after the incident occurs. Then the fire department has to reach the site and come up with a plan of attack. More than half an hour can pass before the firefighters start addressing the flames. The Fire Rover system uses early detection and information forwarding to protect firefighters and the facility.

Conclusion

Ryan provided a lot of valuable insights into the dust explosion and fire hazards that exist in the waste and recycling industry. His reports and articles also a wealth of data about combustible dust hazards in these facilities and make it possible to take informed measures to keep their employees safer.

If you would like to know more about Waste and Recycling facility fire prevention or the Fire Rover system please reach out to Ryan at [email protected] or 1-614-327-3744. More information can also be found from his LinkedIn Profile.