SBIR Phase I: Clean Air Exhuast Lines Explosion Isolation Device for Combustible Dust Applications

The broader impact/commercial potential of this Small Business Innovation Research Phase I project is to provide a safer working environment for powder bulk handling facilities, while simultaneously helping the facility reduce its energy consumption by allowing it to recycle conditioned air back into the building. The risk associated with combustible dusts are catastrophic, yet the awareness of the risks is still lacking. Commercially, this project would design a product that would be installed at powder bulk handling facilities, that handle combustible dust, that would prevent fire propagation from the combustion of dust from entering the work area of the facility. The technical objectives in this Phase I research project are developing an economical device which will act as a flame and pressure arrestor for dust deflagrations, while maintaining enough airflow through the device to allow the process to be balanced. Determining an appropriate stack-up of mesh material that will quench the propagating deflagration, while also withstand the pressures developed during a deflagration, will also help expand the field of knowledge of combustible dust, and developing protection equipment for them. Through the development of this product, additional full scale test will have to be performed which will add to the database of how combustible dust events occur and react.