Imaging to study dust re-suspension phenomena in case of loss of vacuum accidents inside the pharmaceutical industries

Abstract

Dust explosion is one of the most dangerous hazards in process industries. The several accidents happened in the last hundred years led to guidelines to prevent and mitigate industries. Unless these, dust explosion events still happen. Development of advanced tools is necessary to reach a definitive way to face these threats. Dust concentration, particle size, velocity, moisture and turbulence of dust are important parameters in determination of dust explosion severity. Therefore, in industries with high risk of dust explosion, these parameters should be monitored and controlled. In this work, the authors show their experimental facility and software to monitor dust velocity. The experiments are performed inside STARDUST-U, an experimental facility to test dust re-suspension in case of Loss of Vacuum Accidents.