In today’s episode of the Dust Safety Science podcast, we do a Safety Share summary of an explosion at a wood pellet receiving port. In Safety Share episodes, we typically share an observation or an incident that’s been released or a piece of information that has some sort of lesson involved. Past episodes have included:
- DSS105: Safety Share – Failed Testing of High-Speed Abort Gates with Corey Gardiner
- DSS183: Safety Share: Controlling The Hazard Is Not Removing The Hazard
- DSS185: Safety Share – Can Combustible Dust Explode in a Freezer?
- DSS190: Safety Share: Wood Hogger Fires and Deflagrations at Sawmills
This particular episode is based on a Manufacturing Safety Alert released by the BC Forest Safety Council in conjunction with the Wood Pellet Association of Canada and the MAG Group (Manufacturing Advisory Group) in British Columbia. You can sign up here for these alerts.
Receiving ports handle incoming materials that contain combustible dust or generate it through processing, moving, unloading, and loading. Understanding the hazards and incidents that have arisen in these types of applications is very important, especially if you’re working in a facility that handles combustible materials.
An Overview of the Explosion Incident
The explosion happened at an overseas receiving port where transport ships carrying wood pellets were being unloaded. The equipment involved had explosion panels that activated during the deflagration. Fortunately, nobody was seriously injured, although one employee was reported to have been shaken up.
In the Safety Share, there was no mention of damages associated with the incident, such as product downtime, ongoing fire, but rather the results of the investigation. Experts concluded that the explosion was likely caused by tramp metal recovered in the cargo in discharge magnets in the continuous ship unloader.
Recommended Action Items for Wood Pellets
The Wood Pellet Association of Canada and BC ForestSafety Council sent their members four suggested actions in the Safety Share.
Review Tramp Metal Magnets
To begin with, wood pellet producers should ensure that tramp metal magnets are installed, maintained, and working properly in pellet discharge and loading systems. This can stop the tramp metal from getting into the shipments in the first place.
Inspect Wood Pellet Receiving Locations
The second recommendation is that receiving operations, including ports, should also inspect their wood pellet receiving locations to ensure adequate metal detection and removal systems are in place.
Investigate Near-Misses
A third recommendation is that both production and exportation facilities should consider tramp metal captures as significant near-misses that should be investigated.
This is a really good point. If you pulled out tramp metal at the receiving location, that’s a system failure. Tramp metal shouldn’t be allowed into the shipment in the first place. It would be prudent to do an investigation there and work with the producer to determine why it happened.
As part of this recommendation, they suggest that feedback be provided to all those involved in transportation of wood pellets so that tramp metal is not transported. Failure to do so can lead to issues with smouldering inside ship containers during transportation.
Inspect and Clean All Ship Holds Before Loading
As a fourth recommendation, all ship holds should be inspected and cleaned prior to loading bulk materials such as wood pellets.
Other Considerations
Shipping and receiving ports handling wood, grain, foodstuffs, coal or charcoal, and other materials that can cause combustible dust deflagrations and explosions should be evaluated at ports of entry.
At the very least a combustible dust management program, including prevention and protection practices, should be included. This incident would have been much worse had there not been adequate venting on the equipment receiving those pellets. If the protection was not in place, there’s a very high chance that somebody could have been injured. In some cases, dust hazard analyses may be required at these types of facilities.
That’s one set of other considerations. The other one is that we should really be considering our emergency response for fires at these types of facilities. In one of our first episodes, DSS010: Biomass Fire & Explosion Hazards and UK regulations with Alan Tyldesley, we talked about how challenging it is when you have complex conveyor systems at these unloading terminals and a fire starts on one of those conveyors. It’s extremely easy to have a huge fire spread over a lot of area.
Conclusion
This wood pellet fire is only one of many Manufacturing Safety Alerts released by the BC Forest Safety Council and the Wood Pellet Association of Canada. Anyone can sign up to receive them and not only learn what happened but how to prevent similar occurrences moving forward.
If you have questions about the contents of this or any other podcast episode, you can go to our ‘Questions from the Community’ page and submit a text message or video recording. We will then bring someone on to answer these questions in a future episode.
Resources mentioned
Dust Safety Science
Combustible Dust Incident Database
Dust Safety Science Podcast
Questions from the Community
Dust Safety Academy
Dust Safety Professionals
Dust Safety Share
Organizations
Wood Pellet Association of Canada
Manufacturing Advisory Group
BC Forest Safety Council
Alerts
Manufacturing Safety Alert: Explosion at Receiving Port (Wood Pellets)
Sign-Up Page for Safety Alerts
Previous Episodes
- DSS010: Biomass Fire & Explosion Hazards and UK regulations with Alan Tyldesley
- DSS105: Safety Share – Failed Testing of High-Speed Abort Gates with Corey Gardiner
- DSS183: Safety Share: Controlling The Hazard Is Not Removing The Hazard
- DSS185: Safety Share – Can Combustible Dust Explode in a Freezer?
- DSS190: Safety Share: Wood Hogger Fires and Deflagrations at Sawmills
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