APPLICATION OF FACTORIAL EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN TO DETERMINE THE OPTIMUM TEST PARAMETERS FOR A 36-L DUST EXPLOSION EQUIPMENT
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In this work, we used a systematic calibration methodology to identify the operating conditions for a customized 36L dust explosion equipment to obtain results comparable to standardized equipments such as 20L or 1 m3 vessels. The parameters considered for the equipment calibration included initial vacuum level, dust dispersion time, and ignition delay time. By employing factorial analysis for the experiment design, we determined that the dust dispersion time is the most important factor affecting the dust cloud turbulence inside the vessel, and hence the magnitude of the KSt values. In a more fine-tuning of the test parameters, we adjusted the ignition delay times to obtain KStvalues that are in agreement with other standard apparatus, and that are reported in round robin tests reports. The calibration of the equipment was verified by conducting a complete dust explosive characterization of niacin samples used in calibration round robin test (CaRo 2001). The results obtained with the 36-L dust explosion equipment showed a good agreement with the reported data, which demonstrates the effectiveness of the strategy followed for the calibration. Crown Copyright 2011.
