EXPLOSION PROTECTION IN GRAIN HANDLING FACILITIES:

FROM COUNT MOROZZO TO COMPUTATIONAL FLUID DYNAMICS

Trygve Skjold
1,2
* & Rolf K. Eckhoff
2
1
GexCon, Fantoftvegen 38, 5892 Bergen, Norway
2
University of Bergen, Allgaten 55, 5007 Bergen, Norway
*Corresponding author. E-mail: trygve@gexcon.com
Abstract
Dust explosions represent a serious hazard in the food and feed industry. This paper reviews
some milestones in the history of explosion protection in grain handling facilities, including an
incident that took place in a bakery in Turin in 1785, early research motivated by a series of
devastating flour mill explosions during the second half of the nineteenth century, selected
research campaigns in the twentieth century, and finally prospects for safe design of grain
handling facilities based on computational fluid dynamics (CFD) in the twenty-first century.
To illustrate some of the challenges associated with realistic modelling of industrial dust
explosions, some large-scale dust explosion experiments, performed in a 250 m
3
spherical
vessel, have been simulated with the CFD code DESC.
Key words: dust explosions, explosion protection, computational fluid dynamics
1. Introduction
Dust explosions pose a hazard whenever combustible material is present in the form of fine
powder, there is a possibility of dispersing a sufficient mass of dust in air to form an explosive
cloud within a relatively confined/congested volume, and there is an ignition source present.

FIGURE 1: Explosion pentagon, after Kauffman (1981).
Dust explosions are inherently complex phenomena. The flow in a mechanical suspension is
inherently turbulent, the overall process is inherently transient, and the course of events tend
to escalate due to flame acceleration, dust lifting ahead of the flame front, and possibly
pressure-piling in complex geometries. Flame propagation in dust clouds entails premixed
combustion with non-premixed substructures (Williams, 1986), and no fundamental theory
for predicting basic combustion parameters for such systems exists today.
1. Count Morozzo di Bianz
The incident that took place in the bakery of Mr. Giacomelli in Turin on the evening of 14
December 1785 was not the first accidental dust explosion in the history of mankind, but it
may well be the first to be scientifically investigated and documented. A boy was employed in
collecting flour from an upper to a lower chamber in a warehouse, when a large amount of
flour suddenly fell; creating a dust cloud that was ignited by a lamp. The flame propagated
into neighbouring rooms, creating an overpressure that blew out the windows in the bakery.
The boy suffered modest burn injuries, and another boy broke his leg after jumping from a
scaffold. From a safety point of view, it is interesting to note that Mr. Giacomelli attributed the
accident to the extraordinary dryness of the corn that year. After investigating the incident,
Count Morozzo offered the following explanation (Morozzo di Bianz, 1795):
as the flour fell down, a great quantity of inflammable air, which had been confined in its
interstices, was set free; this, rising up, was inflamed by contact with the light; and, mixing
immediately with a sufficient quantity of atmospheric air, the explosion took place on the
side where there was the least resistance. As to the burning of the hair, and the skin, of
the boy who was in the warehouse, the cause of it must be attributed to the fine particles
of the flour, which, floating in the atmosphere, were kindled by the inflammable air, in the
same manner as powder from stamina of certain vegetables, (particularly of pine, and of
some mosses,) when thrown into the air, takes fire if any light is applied to it.
This statement identifies the oxidant, the mixing, the ignition source, the confinement, and
partly the true nature of the fuel (Fig. 1). The reference to inflammable air is consistent with
the prevailing theories in chemistry at the time: Cavendish (1766) had produced inflammable
air by combining metals with strong acids, and Lavoisier named this particular type of
inflammable air hydrogen in 1783. Hence, given the terminology of the time, it can be
argued that Count Morozzo accounted for the release of combustible volatiles from the flour:
We must recollect that flour also furnishes alkaline inflammable air, which is produced
from the glutinous vegeto-animal part of the corn: and we know that this kind of
inflammable air is of a very active nature.
The mechanisms involved in rapid flame propagation in mechanical suspensions of flour or
other finely divided combustible materials remain a subject for scientific investigations, more
than two centuries after Count Morozzo di Bianz investigated the accident in Turin.
2. Disasters and awareness
Although accidental dust explosions no doubt occurred in pre-industrial societies, the hazard
increased dramatically as a result of the technological changes in agriculture, manufacturing,
mining, transportation and storage that characterized the industrial revolution (1750-1850).
Dust explosion research in the Eighteenth century focused primarily on the role of coal dust
in colliery explosions, summarized by Rice (1911), and on flour dust explosions. Numerous
disasters in mills triggered widespread research on both sides of the Atlantic: Tradeston mill
in Glasgow, 9 July 1872: 18 people killed; Werdermhle in Hameln, 7 November 1887: 11
people killed; Washburn mills in Minneapolis, 2 May 1878: 18 people killed; etc. It is
interesting to note how the awareness of the dust explosion hazard evolved during this
period: Behrns (1873), Abel (1875), Anon. (1878), Peck, (1879), MacAdam (1880), Cassels
(1874), Cornell (1879), Cordes (1881), Johnson (1881), Tobin (1882ab), etc. Cassels
summarized the explanation put forwards by Dr. Weibe from Germany:
It is based on a demonstrable fact that flour, in the form of impalpable powder,
undergoes rapid combustion when ignited, and during this combustion a highly explosive
hydrocarbon gas is generated, similar to that arising from heated petroleum or goal gas,
which, like these gases, when mixed with atmospheric air, and more or less confined, is
powerfully explosive.
This explanation was in agreement with the views held of other researchers at the time,
including Watson Smith from Manchester and Stevenson McAdam from Edinburg. Cassels
pointed out that larger flour mills was more liable to accidental explosions than small ones.
Peck (1879) demonstrated by a few simple experiments, the fact that all combustible martial
when finely divided, forming a dust or powder, will, under proper conditions, burn with
explosive rapidity. Fig. 2 illustrates one of his experiments: an assistant placed a dust
sample in the corner of a box, lighted a lamp inside the box, placed the cover, and stepped
upon it: Take notice that upon blowing through the hole, and filling the box with a cloud of
flour, the cover comes up suddenly, man and all, until hot gas gets a vent, and a stream of
fire shoots out in all directions.

FIGURE 2: Dust explosion experiment by Peck (1879) and the flour gun of Tobin (1882a).
3. Explosion protection systems
Much of the early work on explosion protection focused on preventive measures, in particular
prevention of ignition sources. One notable exception is the contribution of Hexamer
(1883ab). In his first paper, Hexamer emphasized the importance of preventing the
propagation of explosions between connected process units, preferably by passive means:
The great danger in malt mills is that, in case of an explosion, the explosive force and fire
is not confined to the mill only, but runs from the mill into the elevator, and from there is
distributed over the entire building. To check the force and fire of an explosion we must
put a barrier between the mill-box and the elevator. This can best be accomplished by
placing a receiving hopper below the rolls, kept well filled while the mill is in operation,
and from this hopper feed into the elevator cups. We thereby have a barrier of meal
between the elevator and the mill, a barrier almost as effective as one of sand.
He went on to propose ways of mitigating the explosion and extinguishing fires:
That the force of explosions may be spent without harming the building, large vent pipes
leading into the open air should be introduced into the mill-box. Iron pipes closed on
the outside by caps, similar to our common stove pipe caps which in the case of an
explosion would be readily blown off would be most effectual. [] Steam jets should be
introduced into the mill-box and elevator. One of our breweries has extinguished two
explosive malt mill fires by this means. [] I will not take up your valuable time in
describing other minor devices, which I have invented, such as an automatic contrivance
by which I close all communicating openings between the mill-house and brewery, and
turn on the steam by the pressure of the explosions.
In his second paper, Hexamer described his automatic suppression and isolation system in
more detail. The overall system included several levels of protection, dealt with the human
factor, and both carbon dioxide and water were proposed as suppression agents.

FIGURE 3: Vertical section of mill room with explosion protection system (Hexamer, 1883b).
The development of modern systems for active explosion protection was primarily motivated
by the significant losses that occurred during World War II from exploding fuel tanks in
combat airplanes resulting from incendiary strikes (Maisey, 1980). The concept was patented
and experimentally proven by two scientists, Glendinning and MacLennan, at Royal Aircraft
Establishment Farnborough. The key to the invention was detection of the explosion during
the early stages, when the rate of pressure growth is relatively slow, and to extinguish it by
using a small explosive charge to disperse extinguishing material into the space where the
flame propagates. Graviner pioneered the development of systems applicable to industrial
type of hazards (Grabowski, 1959; Maisey, 1980; Moore, 1979). Active explosion protection
is currently used for both suppression and isolation, for instance in connection with grain
elevators (Hauert & Radant, 2007).
The most frequently used method used for explosion protection is venting, i.e. the relief of
damaging overpressures by allowing combustion products and unburned dust to escape
through vent openings. The early guidelines for vent sizing were primarily of qualitative
nature. Following a series of disastrous explosions on the British Isles in 1911, one of the
recommendations given by Her Majesties Inspector of Factories was simply: The roof should
be such as to offer little resistance in the event of an explosion (Price & Brown, 1922). Since
then, various experimental campaigns have resulted in increasingly more quantitative
guidelines for design of vent openings (Skjold et al., 2008). Fig. 3 illustrates large-scale
experiments in vented enclosures: the 500 m
3
silo at Boge and 236 m
3
silo at Stordalen, both
Norway (Eckhoff, 2003), and the 250 m
3
spherical vessel used by Bartknecht (1985).

FIGURE 4: Large-scale vented dust explosion experiments.
3. Simulations
Recent development of advanced methods for predicting the consequences of industrial dust
explosions include phenomenological tools and computational fluid dynamics (CFD). With
improved modelling of the physical and chemical phenomena that govern the course of dust
explosions, the predictive capabilities of advanced models can be extended significantly
beyond the limited range of scenarios that is likely to be covered by experiments, and hence
beyond the scenarios that can be represented by simple empirical correlations.
It is not straightforward to model large-scale dust explosion experiments, not only because of
the inherent complexity of particle-laden flows and turbulent combustion, but also due to the
transient nature of the dust dispersion process typically adopted for this type of tests. To
illustrate some of these challenges, Figs. 5 and 6 summarize results where the CFD code
DESC has been used to simulate dust explosion experiments performed in a 250 m
3

spherical vessel (Bartknecht, 1985), shown on the right in Fig. 4. The numbers 100 and
125 in the legends indicate the relative values used for the laminar burning velocity, S
L
,
taken either directly from the procedure described by Skjold (2007), or the values increased
by a factor 1.25 (Skjold, 2010). The four-digit numbers in the legend indicate the ignition
delay time t
v
: 0600 = 1.2 s, 0850 = 0.85 s, etc. Finally, the experimental results for the
vented cases in Fig. 6 include data for two vent areas: 3.14 m
2
and 4.62 m
2
.

FIGURE 5: Simulated explosion pressure and rate of pressure rise: Constant volume.

FIGURE 6: Simulated explosion pressure and rate of pressure rise: Vented scenarios.
Figs. 5 and 6 illustrate that the results from the simulations are quite sensitive to the reactivity
of the dust-air mixtures. Although the results are in reasonable agreement for the lowest dust
concentration, the simulated maximum rates of pressure rise, (dp/dt)
max
in Fig. 5, are
significantly higher than the experimental values for higher concentrations. The over-
prediction is again reflected in the simulated reduced explosion pressures P
red
and rates of
pressure rise (dp/dt)
red
in Fig. 6. There can be several explanations for the discrepancies
between experimental and simulated results. For the experiments in the 250 m
3
vessel,
Bartknecht (1985) used maize starch with median particle size 10 m. For the combustion
model in DESC, Skjold et al. (2006) used data for dried maize starch with median particle
size 13 m, obtained from experiments in a 20-litre vessel. Particle size distribution, moisture
content and dispersion system influence the experimental results significantly, and the same
nominal dust concentrations may not correspond to the same actual dust concentrations in
the two vessels. The turbulent flow conditions will not be the same in the two vessels, and
the effect of radiation on flame propagation in dust clouds is likely to depend on scale. There
are also inherent limitations in the models implemented in DESC.
4. Conclusions
Although technology for protecting personnel and property from dust explosions have
developed significantly since Count Morozzo di Bianz investigated the flour dust explosion
that occurred in a bakery in Turin in 1785, severe losses still occur during handling of grain,
food and feed products. Current standards and guidelines for explosion protection are
reasonably well developed, but there is still a need for improved methodologies, particularly
for design of relatively complex geometries: grain elevators, pneumatic conveying systems,
large silo complexes, etc., and it is not obvious that this challenge can be met simply by
introducing additional or improved empirical correlations in codes or standards.
Ignorance [of phenomena] and a culpable negligence of those precautions which ought
to be taken, have often caused more misfortune and loss than the most contriving malice:
it is therefore of great importance that these facts should be universally known, that public
utility may reap from them every possible advantage.
Count Carlo Ludovico Morozzo di Bianz (1743-1804)
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