Page 613 - Dust Explosions in the Process Industries

Chapter 9

Research and Development, 1990-2002

9.1
I NTRODUCTlON

9.1 .I
BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVEOF CHAPTER

This review chapter is the result of a continuous literature surveyprocess starting in 1992,
just after the release of this book’s first edition. Early versions of the chapter were pre-
sented at three consecutive IBC courses in the United Kingdom and at a conference in
Poland. The first published paper version was Eckhoff (1993a). A subsequent interme-
diate version was presented in the Peoples Republic of China (Eckhoff, 1994).The latest
intermediate paper version, just before appearing as Chapter 8 in the second edition of
this book in 1997, was Eckhoff (1996a). In the present, third edition of the book, the
review chapter has been updated by adding a substantial amount of more-recent mate-
rial, published in the period 1996-2002, mainly papers in internationallyrecognizedjour-
nals and proceedings of internationally recognized conferences and symposiums.
The purpose of the chapter is twofold. First is a wish to update the book by summa-
rizing, within a structured framework, the results of some of the extensive research and
developmentthat has taken place worldwide since the completionof the manuscript for
the first edition (Chapters 1 to 7 plus appendices)in 1990.Second is the need to empha-
size even more strongly some significant features of a new philosophy of dust explosion
prevention and mitigation that seems to have gained strength over the last decade.
Increased digerentiation and tailor-making are key words.
In the first part of the chapter,new knowledge on the fundamentalaspects are reviewed.
Such insight is becoming steadily more important as more and more practical problems
are being approached by developing comprehensive mathematical models. New, more
directly applicableknowledge on preventing and mitigating dust explosions in industrial
practice are addressed specificallyin the second part of the chapter. The final third part is
devoted to the important area of test methods to assess ignitability and explosibilityof dusts.

9.1.2
BOOKS AND CONFERENCE PROCEEDINGS PUBLISHED
AFTER 1990

Bartknecht (1993)produced a comprehensiverevised, updated, and extended unified ver-
sion of his two previous books, the one on dust and gas explosions from 1978and the one
on dust explosions only from 1987 (see Chapter 1). The new unified volume, published