DSS009: Understanding Combustible Dust as a Global Challenge and Developing Global Solutions (Our 2019 Dust Safety Focus Area)

This episode of the Dust Safety Science podcast recaps what we accomplished in 2018. We look at our goals for 2019, which include a greater understanding of combustible dust as a global challenge and the development of global solutions. And we also look at the history of combustible dust safety dating as far back as 1795, with a discussion on what can be learned from history. Wereview the research that has been done in the field and how that compares to the current focus in the industry.

What Did We Achieve in 2018?

Our corporate entity, DustEx Research Ltd. and our new website, DustSafetyScience.c om, launched in April of this year. In that same month, Dr. Chris Cloney went to the Powder & Bulk Solids show in Chicago, where he presented The Combustible Dust Incident Database – A Tool for the Powder Safety Community. The theme of the presentation was focused on the quote by Peter Drucker “You can’t manage what you don’t measure” as it applies to the current status of combustible dust safety.

In the presentation, Chris discussed how the combustible dust community had an urgent need to answer several questions, such as:

How many incidents were occurring around the world?
What were the causes of these incidents?
What methods of prevention could be taken? Both from an engineering standpoint and from the perspective of how people who work in these facilities perceive combustible dust safety.

In the presentation, Chris stated the goal of DustEx Research/DustSafetyScience.com is to see at least one year with zero fatalities, worldwide, by 2038. The Combustible Dust Incident Database and the Dust Safety Science Podcast are two of the tools we will use to measure our progress, create a global community around dust safety, and influence a change in industries handling powdered and dusty materials.

Where Are We at Today?

The support for DustSafetyScience.com currently comes from 18 Dust Safety Member Companies in countries around the world, including the United States, the Netherlands, Sweden, Germany, Finland, and the United Kingdom. Further support also comes from newsletter and incident report sponsors. A list of all supporters in 2018 is included here.

At the time of releasing this podcast episode, the Dust Safety Science website is currently getting around 3,000 visitors a month from across the globe. The newsletter has 1300 subscribers with 40%+ open rates, which is quite high for reader engagement. Although the podcast is just starting, there is over 650 downloads from the first eight episodes.

Focus Area for 2019

The focus area for the Dust Safety Science podcast in 2019 is to understand combustible dust as a global challenge within the community. Moving forward, podcast episodes will feature experts from the United Kingdom, Germany, China, Japan, Africa, and many other countries around the world. We’ll see what’s working in those regions and compare it with what’s working in North America. Our aim is to gain a broader understanding of where the gaps are and what the solutions might be.

In podcast episode number seven with Dr. Ashok Dastidar, he mentioned that everything that we need to know to solve these problems from a technical aspect is already available. While this is true, we also need to consider the human issues. For example:

How do we stop facilities from allowing the dust levels to accumulate?
How do we educate people? How do we increase awareness?

As 2019 progresses, we hope to pull in information from other areas of the world to create better educational and awareness programs that will help solve some of these problems in understanding the human element of combustible dust safety.

Combustible Dust Safety in History

In the podcast episode, we review the history of combustible dust research and workplace safety initiatives and how that relates to the current environment today.

Early Flour Dust Explosions

One of the first combustible dust case studies occurred in Turin, Italy, on December 14th, 1785. From the textbook Dust Explosions in the Process Industries by Dr. Rolf Eckhoff it is reported that, at around 6:00 p.m., an explosion took place in a bakery owned by Count Morozzo. It broke the windows and created a noise that carried for a considerable distance. A boy who had been stirring flour by the light of a lamp suffered burns to his face and arms while another boy broke his leg falling from scaffolding.

At the time of the incident, the warehouse contained around 300 sacks of flour. Count Morozzo checked it for dampness and found it to be very dry. He also spoke to the baker, who said that he had never seen flour so dry as that year, as there had been no recent rain in that region of Italy.

Count Morozzo attributed the warehouse explosion to the extraordinary dryness of the flour dust. He also noted that the baker and several others within the community knew of the hazards of combustible dust and had experienced smaller incidents previously, though they had not caused injury.

These incidents were not isolated to international industries. Nearly a century later than the Turin, Italy, explosion, a spark ignited airborne flour dust within a mill in Minneapolis, killing 18 workers in 1878. Today, there is a museum dedicated to that incident called the Mill City Museum.

Early Dust Explosion Research

Coal dust explosions inspired a lot of research during the late 1800s and early 1900s. In 1885, a German researcher named Engler combined a vial of inflammable methane gas with coal dust or carbon dust to create the first report of a hybrid mixture explosion. This event occurred over 100 years before hybrid mixtures were even a subject of research and served as early confirmation that coal dust was flammable.

The first textbook dedicated solely to dust explosions came out of Germany in 1925 (See Staub-Explosionen by Beyersdorf). In the opening pages, the author poses three questions as described by Dr. Eckhoff in his later text:

Are dust explosions really happening? (asked by common people)
Why are so many dust explosions happening? (asked by plant engineer)
Why aren’t more dust explosions happening? (asked by researcher)

This accurately highlights where we are today with our understanding of combustible dust explosions. The general public either believes they don’t occur or doesn’t have any knowledge of them. Plant engineers want to know why they happen so often and researchers are trying to figure out why they aren’t happening more often in industries handling powder materials.

Dust Explosion Research in the Twentieth Century

The next textbook dedicated to dust explosions was Coal Dust Explosions and Their Suppression by Wacław Cybulski (1973). The author was part of a large research group out of Poland that was really making a lot of headway in investigating coal mine dust explosions. This group also initiated the International Colloquium on Dust Explosions, a biannual conference focused solely on dust explosion.

In 2006 and 2008, this dust explosion colloquium was combined with a semi-annual conference on gas vapour liquid and hybrid explosions to form the International Symposium on Hazards Prevention and Mitigation of Industrial Explosions (ISHPMIE). This conference, which Dr. Cloney has been attending since 2012, is designed to create a global awareness of gas, dust, vapour, and hybrid mixture explosions.

It was during the late 1980s that combustible dust explosion research expanded its scope from focusing mostly on coal dust to examining dust hazards in other industries, such as pharmaceutical, plastic handling, metalworking, and woodworking.

Three specific things came out of this period. All continue to be of interest and are seen in the combustible dust world today.

The KST value (the ST stands for staube, which is the German word for dust). This volume normalized maximum rate of pressure rise is used for vent sizing and design of industrial safety systems.
The research of Dr. Rolf Eckhoff, who spent almost 50 years focusing on dust explosion research. Although his contribution is very broad (see the textbook Dust Explosions in the Process Industries), some specific tests mentioned in the podcast episode include explosions in 236-meter cubed silo structures. This work was done in conjunction with the United States National Grain and Feed Association and helped to design venting parameters that we use today.
The 20-liter chamber sphere used today in most testing labs as a replica for the larger one cubic meter sphere was initiated by the research work done by Dr. Richard Siwek.

Beginning of Industry Recognition

It wasn’t until the early 2000s that the industry started to take more notice of combustible dust safety. In North America, this was due, in large part, to the U.S. Chemical Safety Board’s combustible dust hazard study, which was released in 2006. It focused on three large explosions that occurred in 2003:

Combined, these events resulted in 14 deaths and 81 injuries. Five years later the Imperial Sugar Refinery explosion occurred (See Podcast Episode Three), killing 14 people and injuring 36 others. These events drew industry attention to combustible dust safety and prompted further development of NFPA guidelines, more frequent implementation of the OSHA general duty clause and increased other regulatory aspects in this area within North America.

Although we are making progress in increasing awareness, these explosions continue to occur around the world. A few more recent explosions were mentioned in the podcast episode:

In 1992 the Westray coal mine explosion took the lives of 26 miners in Plymouth, Nova Scotia.
In 2013 a sugar terminal explosion in Port of Santos, Brazil caused serious logistical problems because 60% of the raw sugar produced in Brazil was disposed of through that port. This, in turn, caused the New York Stock Exchange to reach its lowest levels since January of that year, demonstrating the far-reaching impact dust explosions can have.
In 2014 a large explosion at an aluminum polishing plant in Kunshan, China killed 146 workers and injured another 114.
In 2015 a cornstarch explosion in New Taipei, Taiwan, injured 508 people, 199 of whom were left in critical condition when corn dust was sprayed over a concert crowd and ignited when it contacted the hot lighting systems.

As these incidents demonstrate, combustible dust safety is an issue that is not limited to one geographic area. History also shows that it is not confined to a single period in time.

Conclusion

As discussed in the conclusion to the podcast, we see the current period as similar to the 1980s where there was a large combined effort into dust explosion research. This effort gave us many of the technical components of combustible dust safety used in various standards across the world today.

It is our hope that in 2019, we can begin drive this same level of communication within industrial recognition of the hazard and sharing of information between different groups around the world. This will allow us to see what is working in different regions and how it can be implemented to prevent fatal dust fires and explosions globally.