Nick Schlentz, President at Boss Products, LLC, based out of Schertz, Texas, has been involved in different material handling industries for years. He’s also a member of NFPA 61, the standard for prevention of fires and dust explosion in agricultural and food processing facilities.
As President at Boss Products, LLC, Nick is involved in the development and production of abort gates. When Corey Gardiner appeared in Episode #105, he talked about challenges his company encountered with their abort gates and lessons learned from those issues. In this episode, Nick discusses alternatives to abort gates on duct collector dirty side ducting.
Challenges for Abort Gates on the Dust Collector Dirty Side Ducting
Nick said that abort gates experience challenges, especially on the dirty side of dust collectors.
“Our recommendation and thoughts on abort gates are that they should only be installed on the clean side, because they’re just too high risk of failure,” he says. “The blade fluttering is the most common issue for all abort gates, whether it’s installed on the dirty or clean side, but we’ve observed that it’s typically caused by poor duct design or using the undersized abort gates for the volume.”
He also noticed that abort gates would run at an excessively high velocity, which would cause problems.
“We want to be seeing something 3000 to 3,500 feet per minute, maximum. Then what happens though, is that that might be just too slow for material transport. That’s a real major issue. Also, elbows play a major role. Sometimes, elbows get installed too close. They have moderate or short radius and it becomes a really big issue at elevated speeds.”
Other challenges were:
- Contractors installing smaller ducting and abort gates to save money
- Damage from material and corrosive dust
Nick was quick to explain that when applied and installed correctly, abort gates are excellent pieces of equipment. On the clean side of dust collection systems, they divert fire, flames and smoke away from the workplace, keeping it safer.
Abort Gate Alternatives
Boss Products typically handles the dirty side prevention systems in several different ways.
“We typically offer these in a good, better and best approach,” he says. “The better and best solutions that we offer replace the abort gate with an isolation system and we use what’s called a firebreak shutter. It’s basically a gate, or a knife gate that drops very quickly and it’s actually fire-rated and certified for this type of application. So it’s an isolation approach instead of diversion.”
He defined a ‘good solution’ as a detect and water spray system only, which is the most common one that he sees. In his opinion, a better solution is to detect and then spray and isolate at the same time, although this method will shut down the system every time an event occurs.
In Nick’s opinion, the best solution is the one that detects and then sprays. If something makes it past the water spray, the system would detect and isolate it using a physical barrier. He acknowledges, however, that this system might not make financial sense for smaller shops, which is where the ‘good’ and ‘better’ options come in.
“It’s better to have a good solution than no solution,” he says.
Additional Explosion Protection
Nick pointed out that in accordance with NFPA 68, these systems may need properly-sized explosion vents as well as inlet and outlet isolation.
“You have to make sure that those valves have intended use testing and certification for it,” he says. “We actually just finished a certification on our new offering for inlet isolation valves that are certified for isolating the inlet and the outlet push and flow, unlimited elbows, horizontal, vertical and all other angles.”
He added that there has recently been a lot of discussion about anomalies being discovered in the testing procedures, which were not replicated by real-world conditions.
“We’ve had discoveries made in our testing and all of our valves have been certified for these real-world installations.”
Boss Products, LLC has also brought to market a certified and explosion-tested rotary valve that meets all the NFPA compliance and exceeds all the requirements, especially for the composite or non-metallic material. This product addresses issues with hopper isolation, especially in the woodworking industry.
“NFPA compliant valves that you typically see on the market use really tight tolerance rotor blades and they’re just a maintenance nightmare for fibrous and large materials and they just clog,” Nick says. “So what people typically do is use a flex tip rotary valve that’s not compliant and it won’t isolate the flame. We have certified explosion testing documentation on what we all offer and it’s proven within the guidelines of the parameters of this test to isolate and reform.”
Conclusion
At the end of the interview, Nick said he hoped to see the industry, end users, and businesses encourage the prioritization of fire and explosion protection into actual system designs.
“If the actual safety components were just as important as the performance of the dust collection system and that planning was made for proper performance, (it’s) going to eliminate a lot of these failures that you’re seeing here on the market.”
If you would like to discuss further, leave your thoughts in the comments section below. You can also reach Nick Schlentz directly:
Website: https://www.bossproductsamerica.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nick-schlentz-73a20b47/
Email: [email protected]
[email protected]
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Resources mentioned
The resources mentioned in this episode are listed below.
Dust Safety Science
Combustible Dust Incident Database
Dust Safety Science Podcast
Questions from the Community
Dust Safety Academy
Dust Safety Professionals
Organizations
NFPA
Companies
Boss Products, LLC
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DSS114: Alternatives to Abort Gates on Dust Collector Dirty Side Ducting With Nick Schlentz
