Page 24 - Dust Explosions in the Process Industries

Prefaces xxi

I am also most grateful to all the industrial companies, research institutions,and COI-
leagues in many countries, who made available to me and allowed me to make use of their
photographs and other illustrations.A specialthanks to BerufsgenossenschaftlichesInstitut
fiir Arbeitssicherheit (BIA), in Germany, for permission to translate and publish the tables
in the Appendix.
I also wish to express my gratitude to those who have kindly read through sections of
the draft manuscript and/or given constructive criticism and advice: John Nagy, Derek
Bradley, Geoffrey Lunn, Bj@rnHjertager, Gisle Enstad, Dag Bjerketvedt, Ivar @. Sand
and Claus Donat should be mentioned specifically.
Also my indebtedness goes to Chr, Michelsen Institute, Department of Science and
Technology, with its director Dr. Jan A. Andersen, which in its spirit of intellectual free-
dom coupled with responsibility, offered me the opportunity to establish dust explosion
research as an explicit activity of CMI. The institute also gave high priority to and allo-
cated additional resources for the writing of this book, for which I am also most grateful.
This short Preface does not allow me to mention all the good people with whom I had
the privilege to work during my 20 years of dust explosion research at CMI and who
deservemy sincere thanks. The exception is Kjell Fuhre, who worked with me from 1970
to 1988. I wish to thank him specially for having devoted his exceptional engineering
talent to our experimental dust and gas explosion research, in laboratory scale as well
as in full-size industrial equipment.
Finally, I wish to express a special thanks to Mrs. Aaslaug Mikalsen, who, aided by
more than 20 years’ experiencein interpreting my handwriting, was able to transform the
untidy handwritten manuscript to a most presentable format on CMI’s word-processing
system. Many thanks also go to Mr. Per-GunnarLunde, CMI, for having traced the major-
ity of the drawings in the book.

Rolf K. Eckhoff