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Vahid Ebadat, Ph.D., is CEO of Stonehouse Process Safety Inc., Princeton, N.J., a company that provides expert consulting, laboratory testing, training and incident investigation in the specialist fields of dust and gas/vapor explosions, thermal instability, static electricity, process hazard analysis (PHA) and process safety management (PSM). For more information from Stonehouse Process Safety Inc., call 609-455-0001 or visit www.stonehousesafety.com.
Ensuring safety from fires and explosions in drying operations first requires the proper understanding of the thermal instability properties of the powder present in the plant. Four testing methods can effectively determine the powder’s thermal instability hazards and allow evaluation of the self-heating hazards.
Ignition sources for dust fires and explosions can take many forms. When powders are heated, however, new subtle sources of ignition hazards are revealed: Those associated with the inherent thermal instability properties of the powder being heated or dried, and the nature of the drying process.
