Correlations for flame speed and explosion overpressure of dust clouds inside industrial enclosures

Abstract

Explosion relief vents on enclosures in powder-handling plants are currently designed according to technical standards that in some situations may overestimate the required vent area significantly. These technical standards sometimes do not take into account the real work conditions of industrial plants (e.g. turbulence intensity) and therefore explosion worst cases are not always foreseeable. The availability of methods either for the evaluation of explosion overpressure or sizing of relief vents, with involvement of the pre-ignition turbulence, could be very useful for a better estimate of these quantities. In this work two empirical correlations are presented: the first one allows the calculation of the flame speed and the burning velocity starting from the explosion indices KSt and Pmax of the standardized 20-l sphere test. The second allows either the calculation of the explosion overpressure or the sizing of relief vents of an enclosure.