Page 468 - Dust Explosions in the Process Industries

Sizing of Dust Explosion Vents 435

6.2
COMPARISON OF DATA FROM RECENT REALISTIC
FULL-SCALEVENTED DUST EXPLOSION EXPER
WITH PREDICTIONS BY VARIOUS VENT SIZING METHODS

6.2.1
EXPERIMENTS IN LARGE SILOS OF LID I4

The experiments by Matusek and Stroch (1980) in a 500 m3 silo of LID = 3 should be
mentioned. Unfortunately, however, explosibility data for the dusts used were not pro-
vided, and the results are therefore difficult to analyze in a general context.
A series of experiments in a 500 m3silo of LID =4 was reported by Eckhoff and Fuhre
(1984). A cross section of the silo is shown in Figure 6.2.

STEEL PLATES
BLOCKING OFF
PART OF THE SILO
,TOP SURFACE

FLAME OETECTOR 3 STRONG STEEL
GRID FITTED
WITH THREADED
BOLTS
PRESSURE PROBE 3

FLAME OETECTOR 2

PRESSURE PROBE 2
BOLTED-STEEL- PLATE^ ~
FLAME DETECTOR 1

PRESSURE PROBE 1

SILO
WALL

IGNITION SOURCE

BOTTOM
DUST FROM
BLOWER

Figure 6.2 Cross section of 500 m3 silo used in vented dust explosions experimentsin Norway (From
Eckhoffand Fuhre, 7 984).