Dust Explosion Risk in Bulk Cargo Handling
Combustible dust in solid bulk handling: the conditions an explosion needs, the transfer points that create them, and the ship and terminal exposures.
A combustible dust explosion needs fuel, oxygen, an ignition source, dispersion of the dust into a cloud and confinement of that cloud. Solid bulk handling supplies the first four routinely at every transfer point, and the fifth wherever the transfer happens inside a trunk, a conveyor gallery, a silo or a closed hold.
The full article will cover which IMSBC cargoes carry an explicit dust explosion warning in their schedules, including both wood pellet entries, sugarcane biomass pellets and wood torrefied, and the difference between the ship’s exposure, which is intermittent and open, and the terminal’s, which is continuous and enclosed.
It will also cover the controls: enclosed conveyors, minimising free fall and breakage, water-based dust suppression and its interaction with cargoes that must be kept dry, housekeeping to prevent secondary explosions from settled dust, and ignition-source control including the hold lighting provisions some schedules impose.