In this episode of the Dust Safety Science Podcast, we speak with Gilles Plourde, who has been a senior application specialist at Fike Canada for over 12 years. As an expert on designing explosion protection systems for many industries, Gilles helps determine and implement the most effective solutions to protect dust collectors, cyclones, and silos from the impact of dust explosions.
During this interview, Gilles provides an overview of the steps involved in designing a dust explosion protection system, namely:
- What inputs are needed?
- What calculations are involved?
- What are some of the options?
- What does the completed system look like in operation?
- What maintenance is required?
- What is the response when a properly mitigated explosion occurs?
- How is the system reset?
Gills explains in the interview that when a company calls Fike to request an explosion protection system, there are six primary steps involved in the design and installation process.
Step One: Dust Type Identification
What type of explosive dust is being handled? The first step is to test and characterize the dust in the facility. Most testing is done on the contents of the dust collector as it typically involved the driest and finest particles. However, if there is a long process, for example, flour being milled down and passed through a shaker or sifter- dust samples may be taken at different stages of the process, as the Kst can vary.
Step Two: Measuring Facility Layout
Step two addresses the facility layout. Measurements are taken and factored into the final system design.
In many cases, facility owners focus on protecting a certain enclosure, such as putting venting on a bag house or a suppression system on a cyclone, and won’t consider how their decision impacts the isolation design. If there is not enough distance between the protected and interconnected vessels, it may not be possible to stop the explosion from propagating from one to the other.
Step Three: Reviewing Options With the Customer
During step three, the application specialist (Gilles) provides the customer with options for every piece of equipment that can be protected with explosion venting or using an explosion suppression system.
Some customers focus on venting of the explosion, so they make look at explosion protection systems such as:
- Flameless venting
- Outside ducting
- Ducting through the roof
Other customers want explosion suppression systems so that everything is contained in the vessels and they don’t have to deal with a fireball or pressure wave.
In addition to presenting both options, Gilles would explain what happens during a deflagration, so the customer knows what to expect if they vent and what would happen if they suppressed. Their system of choice can also affect how much downtime they could have or even the cost of new equipment parts.
Step Four: Explaining Code Requirements
If the customer selected explosion venting, step four would be:
- Explaining the current code
- Showing them the calculations performed as per the NFPA 68 standards (or EN standards if the customer is in Europe). These calculations could consist of four or five equations depending on the particular equipment layout and parameters.
- Going over the fireball dimensions with them
- Explaining the after-effects of an explosion
- Looking at the isolation side of the explosion protection: with an explosion-vented vessel, there will be faster flame speeds in the connected duct, so the isolation design will have to factor in the location of the device.
The goal is to make sure that the customer understands what is involved with their chosen method of explosion protection.
Step Five: Implementing the Explosion Protection System
In step five, a purchase order is placed and the applications engineer runs the final design calculations. Gilles creates a one-page summary of the following details:
- The dimensions of the vessel
- The operating conditions that the customer has shared
- The combustion and explosion characteristics of the dust
- Anything that was critical to the initial design during quoting
This page is submitted to the customer for verification so that everyone is on the same page and working with the same numbers. The customer then receives a final drawing that shows their piece of equipment with the isolation system, along with a bill of material. The explosion vent will be shown on the drawing or there will be a call-out stating that the vessel is protected with an explosion vent with a certain burst pressure. This diagram serves as an installation drawing for the customer’s contractors.
Once everything is installed, a technician will visit the site, verify everything, and program the control panel. The system is now live and the vessel is protected.
Step Six: Routine Maintenance
With explosion vents, there should be a regular visual inspection to confirm that there are no signs of damage or any obstructions, such as birds nested outside, that can prevent the vent from opening when called upon. The NFPA code also requires quarterly maintenance, during which a technician will come to the site, calibrate the detectors make sure everything is still functioning at the standard that it needs to function at, and then address any concerns the customer may have.
What if an Explosion Occurs?
If an explosion occurs, the replacement process is very similar to the initial startup. The explosion vent would be removed and a new one would be installed. If a chemical isolation bottle was used to isolate the explosion, it would be removed, rebuilt, and refilled with agents before being repressurized.
What Are Some Potential Issues?
When asked to describe explosion protect system issues that are rarely thought of, Gilles recommended attention to the following situations:
- Proper isolation of one piece of equipment from another. There should be anywhere from 20 to 30 feet between vessels so that isolation can be used to stop the explosion from propagating from one vessel to the other.
- The strategic location of process equipment. Customers who want explosion venting should locate some of their dust collectors either outside or near an outside wall, so that venting can be done to a safe location. Episode 4 of the Dust Safety Science podcast, which was about the Nova Scotia dust collector safety program, reviewed common problems like venting to an inappropriate location or closing / locking down vents, which need to open in order to function correctly.
- Taking precautions when venting is done through the roof. Maintenance people can be working on the roof at any time as well as firefighting personnel.
Gilles pointed out that explosion protection is not taught in an engineering type program: nobody goes to school to become an explosion protection system specialist. He recommends that if a customer buys equipment from an OEM, they contact Fike or anyone else selling the systems and ask whether the system they want is safe or practical for their plant layout.
Conclusion
While NFPA codes, EN codes, and other standards are publicly available, facility managers who want that extra level of reassurance with their explosion protection system can call Fike and run their design through an application specialist like Gilles. That way, you know that from a safety perspective, you’ve dotted all the i’s and crossed all the T’s.
If you would like to contact Gilles or the Fike Canada team you can do so through [email protected].
If you have any questions or thoughts on the episode, please leave them in the comments section at the bottom of the page!
Resources Mentioned
The resources mentioned in this episode are listed below.
Dust Safety Science
Combustible Dust Incident Database
Dust Safety Science Podcast
Organizations
Fike Canada
NFPA
Standards
NFPA 68
BS EN 14491:2012:
Dust Explosion Venting Video
Fike – High speed video of vented dust explosion
Previous Podcast Episodes
DSS 004: Nova Scotia Dust Collector Safety Program and Explosion Safety with Jeramy Slaunwhite
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DSS016: Designing Dust Explosion Protection Systems with Gilles Plourde
Full Episode Transcript
Chris Cloney: [00:09] Welcome to episode number 16 of the Dust Safety Science Podcast. We’re looking at creating a worldwide global community around workplace safety and industries handling combustible dust and powdered materials. In today’s episode, we’re doing an interview with Gilles Plourde, an application specialist with Fit Canada. And Jill’s got an extensive background in explosion protection design and actual application of explosion protection systems in various industries. So in this interview, we’ll actually be going through a specific example. I give Jill a specific case of a bag unloading station into a hopper that goes to a mill, then goes to a cyclone that then the fines get fed through to a dust collector. And pretty much to say, starting from that information, you walk into a facility, you get a call. What does it look like to design an explosion protection system from the ground up? Talking with Julie mentioned previously before the episode, that companies often make the mistake of trying to add the explosion protection systems into existing lines, or after the the installation is done, the equipment and that it really can save a lot of money to do it from the the start and initial phases of putting that equipment together. So this, this really gives the idea to the steps that are involved in that whole process from what inputs needed, what calculations are done, what some of the options might be, what it looks like to have that in operation, what maintenance might need to be done.
Chris: [01:36] And at the end of the day, what do we do when you actually have an explosion that’s properly mitigated? What does it look like to reset that system? So I want to thank Gilles for sharing these experiences with a really insightful conversation and a little bit of a step away from some of the high level discussions we’ve been having on the podcast recently. This one’s really down and dirty nuts and bolts. These are the steps to actually solve a real problem in a dust handling operation. So I say thank you, as always for listening to the Dust Safety Science Podcast. Hope you really enjoyed today’s interview and episode with Gilles. Welcome to the Dust Safety Science Podcast. In today’s interview, we’re talking with Gilles Plourde about explosion protection and actually the applications. And we’re designing systems with explosion protection in mind. I think it’s going to be a really interesting episode for the audience, something that’s more specific with a given example and given application than we’ve had in the last couple of episodes, and I’m really excited to have Jill on the show. Gilles, thanks for being here.
Gilles: [02:33] Thanks for having me, Chris. Looking forward to answering any questions that anybody has in regards to explosion protection.
Chris: [02:40] Excellent. So I talked with Jill a couple times. I actually met him in Kansas City this year at the Ishm conference International Symposium on Hazards Prevention and Mitigation of Industrial Explosions, made the longest conference name that we know, but that’s what it’s called. It’s in Kansas City, actually being hosted by Fike. Gilles is a senior application specialist with Fyke in Canada for over the last 12 years, and I really want to have him on the show because through some of the conversation we had there, one of the things that he mentioned was that too many times, explosion protection is really kind of bolted on as an afterthought. It ends up being quite a bit more expensive for the companies to put in as that afterthought. So this episode we want to talk about, well, we have an example application. What does it look like to put in explosion protection from the very front and where are the steps involved for that? Before we get into that, Jill, maybe can you take a couple of moments and just describe what your role looks like with FSA today?
Gilles: [03:36] Yeah, absolutely. I’ve been working with Fight Canada for over 12 years now. Mainly in the explosion protection application design. So my general role is to review a piece of equipment that a customer has a hazardous dust inside, whether that be a dust collector, cyclone silo. We’ve got screw conveyors, conveyor belts. And determine one. What type of protection is required, but also what makes sense from an ongoing maintenance standpoint. So minimizing the risk of and the effects of an unprotected explosion. And at the same time, you know that ensuring that the customer just doesn’t have a box of parts given to him, that he actually understands the risks and how ever you know, how that safety bag is, is going to protect his equipment, his plant and his personnel?
Chris: [04:29] Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And I thought that we might jump into kind of an example. We mentioned before jumping on the call that maybe you’d use a flour mill, as we know that the hazards are there. So say we have a process that involves a hopper. The product would come in in bags, be dumped into a hopper that would go into, say, a mill or a grinding system, which would go to a cyclone to to get the end product out. And then the fines from the cyclone would be shunted off to a dust collector. Would this be sort of typical of a kind of a more simple end of the process that you would see in your work?
Gilles: [05:05] Yeah, that’s probably the simplest start to finish overall of that type of process.
Chris: [05:11] So what does it look like then? We as a company we call like we bring Gilles in and say this is what we want to design. This is what we need to design for our facility. What’s kind of step one?
Gilles: [05:24] So step one would be for anybody designing a system, you really want to have an understanding of the explosive dust that you are handling. So if the customer hasn’t had his dust or tested yet, then we’re going to really recommend that he goes and has the explosive testing perform so that we know what what numbers we’re working with, instead of assuming or referring to a number that might be published in a in an NFPA 60 example, particle size plays a huge role. So understanding the actual characteristics of that dust is going to be the big step one. The next step that we want to look at is how close all these pieces of equipment are, like within what type of proximity the equipment is related to each other. So you’ve got your mill, you’re pneumatically conveying that into the cyclone. The cyclone is then being aspirated from the dust collector. You want to take a look at the duct lengths between the cyclone and the dust collector. One of the most important and typically overlooked or an oversight that we see is a lot of people focus on protecting the hazard within a certain enclosure. So they’ll look at putting venting on a baghouse or maybe put a suppression system on a cyclone. But they don’t necessarily look at how that impacts the isolation design. If you don’t have enough distance between the protected vessel and the interconnected vessel, then you may not be able to stop that explosion from propagating from one to the other. So step two is really kind of getting a general feel of what’s the layout of the process, and take some measurements and make sure that we factor that into the design, the final design that we’re going to be proposing.
Chris: [07:16] That makes sense. So we’re really starting with testing our dust and characterizing our dust. And then step two is looking at the facility layout a bit to make sure the equipment isn’t too close together. And just really, I’d imagine at the later stages there are some important issues with sitting the different equipment and how that is protected. Do you take measurements for the combustible dust at different parts in the assembly line, or do you just take it as is when it’s coming in the bag system? Or is there a process there that should be followed? If you had.
Gilles: [07:46] A very long process where the product coming in might be a little bit, have a little bit of a moisture content, a higher moisture content to it, and then you’re milling it down and then it goes to maybe through a shaker or a sifter. Then I would be looking at testing the sample at different parts of the process only because if you’re trying to, you might have had something like a temporary storage bin. So you’ve, you’ve put the product through the mill. You then convey that into a bin like a way bin. And then from there you start feeding your process and it gets aspirated through a cyclone or, or filter receiver. So the cost of the dust in the end of a dust collector, which is really the driest material that you’re aspirating from the process, might be significantly less in the Wei bin at the beginning of the process. So depending on how complex the entire manufacturing process is, you may or may not want to have your sample tested at multiple stages. Generally speaking, everybody starts with what’s in the dust collector, because at least you know that’s the worst case. And if you do have a very high explosive dust in the dust collector and you know that it’s generally coming, the raw product is a wetter product. If we think of wood dust, for example, then you may find the first third of your process is not even combustible. And then once you’ve milled it and you started heating it up a bit, it has a certain cost range. And at the end of the manufacturing process where you’re now you’re doing maybe like a sanding process or a cutting process and the product’s drier. You have even another cost range for that particular dust. So it depends on the product. It depends on how complex the process is. But the general rule of thumb is to start with the baghouse and then work your way backwards. If you feel that it’s going to benefit from a cost or maybe a system complexity standpoint.
Chris: [09:48] Right. Yeah. Thanks for sharing that. That’s a really helpful and kind of insightful way to think about it. So in our simple system with flowers and and going through a mill and through the cyclone, what’s, what’s step three in the process if there if we want to call it step three.
Gilles: [10:03] So step three is going over the options with the customer. Every piece of equipment can be protected either with explosion venting or using an explosion suppression system. Some of them can be built for containment. So really getting a feel from the customer on what type of protection that they’re looking for. Some companies, they, they just their, their pro venting. So they’ll do anything they need to in order to vent the equipment safely. Whether that means they look at a flameless venting or they duct it outside, maybe duct it up through the roof. But that’s just their method. Their preferred method of protection is venting. And some other customers say they don’t want to deal with a fireball at all, and they just want to have everything contained within the vessel. So they look at an explosion suppression system. So kind of getting a gauge of what their preference is. And also presenting both options is what we generally do, not just to show the cost differences between the two types of protection methods, but also to outline what’s going to happen during a deflagration, what to expect if you vent, and what to expect if you suppress.
Chris: [11:18] Could those have different impacts on how much downtime you’d have, or how much even the cost of new parts that you might need for the safety system or for your other systems?
Gilles: [11:29] Absolutely. I don’t want to sound wishy washy on all these answers, but it’s again, it will depend on the size of the equipment and the complexity of the system. I view it as if you have a simple bag house and you have an explosion and you have an explosion vent, you must consider the fact that you will have a fire in that bag house afterwards. So there’s a 99% guarantee the bags are going to burn. You’re going to have to deal with that fire inside the vessel afterwards. Whereas with a suppression system approach you’re detecting and suppressing the explosion before it fully develops. So there may be a risk that a burning ember remains and it might burn, and start to burn the bags again after the event. But the physics or the nature of the explosion itself, you’re not allowing it to fully develop. So again, depending on the size of the vessel, a simple explosion vent might be a lot cheaper to replace. But then you look at maybe the cost of the filters and you start to go out. You start to weigh your options on, you know, option A or option B, which is really going to cost more for a rebuild or for downtime.
Chris: [12:43] Yeah, that makes sense. And I think we’re always going to run into this scenario where it’s where it’s going to be a cost benefit analysis, especially if you’re talking about these complex pieces of equipment. So we have our step three, which really goes over the options for protection. If we picked one of those options, maybe we’ll move forward with just one of them. So which one do you think this customer selected?
Gilles: [13:03] So let’s say the customer says I like to look at explosion venting. So then step four would be making him aware of the current codes. So sharing with him the calculations that that we’ve performed per the NFPA 68 or per the N standards, if if it’s a European customer, and then going over the fireball dimensions with them, explaining to them the, you know, again, the after effects of an explosion and then looking at the isolation side of the, of the protection. So with an explosion vented vessel, because the explosion is fully developing you, it’s anticipated that you’re going to have faster flame speeds propagating in the connected duct. So then our isolation design, where we’re placing the isolation device, that will factor the the location of that device, obviously. So step four is preparing the calcs, providing the information to the customer, and then, you know, making sure that they understand what is involved with that protection strategy.
Chris: [14:17] Okay. So now we have our strategy in place. We’ve tested our material. We know our cost values and our pmax values and any of the other important kinds of steps in the process. Is it worthwhile to explain what the calculations look like a bit for either NFPA or in the NEN approach? Like, what’s that? What’s that look like? I guess to the listener, I really it’s hard to describe through audio but.
Gilles: [14:43] It can be a long it might be 4 or 5 equations, you know, if you have a vessel indoors and it’s, it’s got a long it’s an explosion vent duct going to the outdoors. It’s elevated operating pressures. So there the code is outlined that there’s a base model or a base formula. And then there’s factors that get added to it depending on, you know, you kind of go through a flow chart and say, are you located indoors? Yes I am. Well are you venting through a vent duct? Yes, I am, you know, so it kind of guides you through that path. But I think generally speaking, what you’re looking at in these formulas is the volume of the vessel. It plays a factor. It’s directly related to how fast that explosion is developing within the vessel. Right. So you take the test that you’ve tested in a, in a 20 liter sphere or maybe a one cubic meter, and then you apply that to the volume of your vessel and you determine what the, what the rate of pressurization would be inside of that particular vessel during an explosion. The opening pressure of the explosion vent has a factor on the final vent sizing area. The design strength of the vessel itself also has a large effect as well. It makes sense if you allow more pressure to build up, then you don’t need as much as big of an opening for that explosion vent. But if you have a much larger opening, well, then you won’t have as much pressure build up during that deflagration.
Chris: [16:19] So I think we are now on to I realized we didn’t actually outline these steps, so we’re sort of making them up as we go along. Anyway, maybe Jill’s has a plan here. But I think we’re on step five, so we’ve selected the venting as the route we want to go. We’ve done our calculations to figure out what venting is needed. We’ve also done our calculations, I want to say back in isolation. That’s what I’m looking for. What’s the next step?
Gilles: [16:46] So step five is to place a PO and allow the applications engineer to to run the final design calculation. So we button up. One of the things we do here is we will summarize all the dimensions of the vessel, the operating conditions that the customer has shared, the explosive characteristics of the dust. Like anything that was critical to the initial design. During quoting, we summarize that all on a single page. We submit that to the customer, have them verify everything, and then they send it back. And at that point now, everybody’s on the same page. We’re all working with the exact same numbers. And then we prepare the final drawings for, for that design. So from a fight standpoint, you’ll, you’ll receive a final drawing that shows your piece of equipment with the isolation system on the inlet line, the explosion vent will either be shown on the drawing or there’ll be a call out saying this vessel is protected by an explosion vent with a certain burst pressure, and then you get your bill of material and it’s an installation drawing for your contractors to to get everything installed on the equipment.
Chris: [17:55] And how long might an installation like that actually take in? Man. Hours to, to put on. I know that’s a very big question, but maybe just another simple system. We’re just talking about a single.
Gilles: [18:07] Simple system, you’re probably, I’d say about a week between mechanical and electrical. It depends on you, if you’re contracting it out or if you have in-house people that are going to do the installation. But generally speaking, you’re about a week’s time. And then once you’ve installed everything, then the a technician comes to site and, you know, verifies everything and programs the the control panel and everything for you and then flips the key or turns or flips the switch, sorry, turns the key and hands it over and says, okay, your system is now on. It’s live and your vessel is protected.
Chris: [18:45] Well, there we go. We now wash your hands and we’re all done.
Gilles: [00:18:49] That’s right.
Chris: [00:18:50] No, that’s a really great, succinct kind of flow through. Are there any follow on that needs to be done from this whole process or routine maintenance or what’s that look like?
Gilles: [19:01] For explosion vents, it’s more of a visual inspection. So if you want to take a look at the explosion, make sure you don’t see any signs of damage. There’s no. You know, a lot of times there may be birds. If it’s located outside, there might be birds that are trying to build a nest in front of the explosion vents. So it’s a passive device. It’s designed to rupture at a certain pressure. And as long as you don’t hinder the opening of that explosion vent, then it’s going to open. When it’s called upon by any active system, then, you know, you do have to do some per the NFPA code, it’s a quarterly maintenance. So a technician will come to site and calibrate the detectors. Make sure the panel, the controller and everything is still functioning in the standard that it needs to function at and then address any, any concerns with the customer if they’ve had any within the last three months, you know, since the start up.
Chris: [19:59] Okay. And I think we’ll call that step six, which would be ongoing maintenance. And I think it kind of closes out the whole life cycle. Now I’m running this operation and I have an explosion happen and everything works as designed. So it was vented properly. It was isolated to my dust collector. We already talked about this a little bit, but what does the replacement process look like? Or the steps to get up and running again?
Gilles: [20:27] The replacement is going to be very similar to the initial startup. So the explosion vent would be removed and a new one would be installed. The isolation system, if you were using a chemical isolation bottle to do the explosion isolation, then that bottle would be removed and rebuilt as well. So we would refill it with an agent Repressurize the bottle and get the customer back up and running.
Chris: [20:54] Well there. Yeah, that’s that’s the whole process in six and a half steps we’ll say yeah.
Gilles: [21:00] It could take a couple months. But no it’s well certainly.
Chris: [21:05] And I think that makes a lot of sense. And like you mentioned in our conversation before, if you take a proactive approach and think about this at the very start, then you won’t run into some of these issues that probably cause the price to go up, the complexity go up, the requirements for maintenance inspection to go up. At the end of the day, even things as simple as having your equipment far enough apart that you can put in isolation. There’s probably a lot of examples of that. Can you give any of your top tips for things that you’ve seen that haven’t been thought of from the start, that could cause issues?
Gilles: [21:39] Yeah, I would. The main thing I’d be focusing on is can you effectively isolate one piece of equipment from the other? Generally speaking, if you have anywhere from 20 to 30 ft of duck run between the two vessels, you should be able to isolate between the two. That that gives you an adequate distance that you can detect an explosion in one vessel and stop it from getting into the other. Another thing I’d be looking at is the strategic location of your process equipment. If you know that you want to be looking at explosion venting, then it may benefit you from locating some of your dust collectors either outside or near an outside wall. That could be vented to a safe location. So I’ve been to many plants where even though the dust collector is outdoors, or it might be right beside an outside wall, it’s where they’re looking to aim. The explosion vent is into a parking lot, and obviously that’s, you know, that’s not acceptable for the codes. It’s not acceptable from a safety standpoint. Like there’s you want to make sure that fireball is is not going into a location where people could be occupying.
Chris: [22:50] That makes sense. And we covered that a bit in episode four of the podcast talking about the Nova Scotia Dust Collector Safety program and one of the most common issues that they found when going through all the wood shops and schools in the province. Well, there are several common things that we outlined in that podcast, and we find it does save Science.com for. But one of them was venting to an inappropriate location or painting over vents or bolting over vents or putting locks on vents. They need to open in order to function properly. And when they do a fireball, um, maybe we’ll look to put a video of this up with the show notes, because a fireball will be ejected most likely from that vent. So you can’t have picnic tables in front of it or, you know, areas where people might be at the end of the day. Yeah.
Gilles: [23:41] You know, other storage, like if you have a storage shed in the area, some areas will be somewhat excluded. The important thing is that it could be an area where you will work as long as you’re not working there while the protected vessel is in operation. So it could be a locked out, fenced off area that you guys may only access, you know, 2 or 3 times a year. And when you do that, you have a lockout tagout procedure so that you can’t. You shut down the baghouse before you walk into this blast zone. We’ll call it type of area.
Chris: [24:15] And a good example of that would be obviously changing out the barrels or the dust collection dust. Yep and turning off the equipment before sending people into that area.
Gilles: [24:24] Even working on the roofs. A lot of customers, you know, they’ll jump on to, well, let’s just vent it up through the roof. And they may not realize that they might have maintenance people going up there on a regular basis. So it’s kind of out of sight, out of mind. You don’t think about who’s going to be on the roof at any point in time, but you may have a leak in one section of the plant and they’re going up there to inspect it. And meanwhile they’re working right beside an explosion vent that’s ducting up through the roof. So it’s, you know, the the signs and the, the the barricades are generally applied when you’re at ground level, but as soon as you get up in the air, people tend to forget that, you know, there could still be people in these areas doing something unrelated to the process that is being protected.
Chris: [25:13] Yeah, that makes sense. And even first responders, if you have a fire and you get a firefighter up there you shouldn’t be able to easily walk where they like. The walkway shouldn’t go over the vent.
Gilles: [25:24] Correct? Yep.
Chris: [25:26] Verbally, there’d be some sort of barrier stopping people from just going in there, you know, and working or or otherwise. So yeah, that was a really great overview of the process of figuring out how to design, install and implement exposure protection systems from the ground up. Some of the issues that you might run into if you if you don’t consider these things first, and even some of the issues that you might run into down the road and what it looks like to do maintenance and replacement on these systems, is there anything else like that you’d like to leave the listeners with from this episode or from your experience?
Gilles: [26:01] I mean, I’ve been doing this for a long time. I think the important thing, one important thing that I learned is everything explosion, protection related. None of this is taught in an engineering type program, so nobody goes to school to become an explosion protection application specialist. So these are all things from a protection side, applying the equipment. You learn as you do. And one of the big challenges that we run into a lot is a customer may be buying a if we go back to our mill example, they might be buying the dust collector from OEM number number one. And the OEM number one is informed is providing explosion protection. And they say they’re going to provide explosion isolation. And then they’re buying the cyclone from OEM number two. And they’re saying the same thing. We’re going to protect it. And we’re going to provide you isolation. But nobody’s looking at the overall process. And, you know, realizing that maybe these two vessels are located within ten feet of each other and that even though both companies are saying you’re going to have to put my isolation bottle, you know, 15ft away, that doesn’t really become doesn’t get nobody is aware of it until it’s too late. Until everything’s installed. And then someone raises their hand and says, well, how does this fit? How does this work? So what I, what I like to recommend to customers is if you if you’re buying a piece of equipment from an OEM and it has protection on it, there is no harm in calling the, you know, either calling Fike or any of our anybody else in the industry that that’s selling these systems and just ask them say hey, does this make sense? Does this seem practical? Here’s my plant layout. Is this the best way to do this? I don’t think anybody gets offended when you’re calling to ask a general question. The bottom line here is, it’s safe. And I think what’s most important is that it’s done properly and that nobody’s cutting corners just to make it fit.
Chris: [28:05] That’s a really good way to think about it. And I, I would totally agree. And I’ve talked to lots of people from Fike and from other companies. And that’s the general consensus is that they just like to be contacted, just so they can tell you if things are going to make sense or not make sense, and that safety is really the number one in the first thing, and it’s the thing that I like. And the reason I recommend that people talk to experts like yourself is that you’ve seen, you know, this isn’t your first flour mill. This isn’t your first lumber mill. This isn’t your first pharmaceutical company. Where with the OEMs, it may not necessarily have that background experience where they’ve walked a lot of facilities or they’ve seen a lot of the issues. That’s why it’s important to bring in experts like yourself to to give the, the okay and the, the go ahead on those sort of things.
Gilles: [00:28:54] Yeah. And that’s all I mean it’s public info. I think all the NFPA codes, the N codes, everything is publicly available. No one’s hiding anything. So if you, you know, just that extra assurance that if, if you call, we’ll say fake and you run your design through any of our application specialists and we’re in agreeance with how it’s being protected, it’s that extra safety or sense of comfort that, hey, this is this is done right. We’ve crossed all our T’s. We’ve dotted our I’s. Okay, let’s move forward. You know, everybody can put their head on their pillows comfortably at night.
Chris: [00:29:31] Yeah, that makes sense to me. And if anyone wants to talk to Gilles more, we’ll definitely have his contact information in the show notes, which will be at dustsafetyscience.com/16. That’s the number 16 for this episode, and you can also visit the FYC website by a member company with Dust Safety Science so you can find the profile on there, or just just type it into online. And these guys know what they’re doing. They’ve been doing it for a long time. And are pretty highly regarded experts in this field. So I just want to say, Jill, thank you again for coming on, and I look forward to a chance to have you, have you again in the future on the podcast.
Gilles: [30:07] Sounds good Chris I really enjoyed it.
Chris: [30:09] All right. Thanks, Gilles. Thanks. I hope you enjoyed that interview with Jill Plourde of Fight Canada. And going over the five and a half, as we called it in the interview or the Six Steps to Designing an Explosion Protection System. I really learned quite a bit from just going through, okay, this is a simple dust handling operation and what inputs required, what kind of calculations are needed and what are my options in protecting that piece of equipment? And how can somebody like Gilles at Fike or any of the other companies that might be involved help in designing a safe system for that? If you want to get hold of Jill or look at the Fike solutions to exposure protection, you can do that in the show notes at dustsafetyscience.com/16 for this episode. And in that show notes, you can leave any comments or thoughts that you have on what topics we should cover in the podcast moving forward. Anyone you’d like to actually have, see, or have on the podcast, or if you want to be on the podcast yourself, you can reach out in the feedback section there and let us know. As always, I want to thank you for everything you’re doing in industries keeping people safe, designing safe explosion protection systems, and just really working to make the workplace safer in industries that are handling combustible dust. I hope you have a great and safe week ahead. I look forward to talking next week with our next guest on the Dust Safety Science Podcast.
