Combustible Dust Testing

Laboratory testing to quantify dust explosion and reactivity hazards

Safety Data Sheets

Develop critical safety data for inclusion in SDS documents

Gas and Vapor

Laboratory testing to quantify explosion hazards for vapor and gas mixtures

UN-DOT
Classification of hazardous materials subject to shipping and storage regulations
Hydrogen
Testing and consulting on the explosion risks associated with devices and processes which use or produce hydrogen
Safety Data Sheets

Develop critical safety data for inclusion in SDS documents

Thermal Stability

Safe storage or processing requires an understanding of the possible hazards associated with sensitivity to variations in temperature

Adiabatic Calorimetry
Data demonstrate the consequences of process upsets, such as failed equipment or improper procedures, and guide mitigation strategies including Emergency Relief System (ERS) design
Reaction Calorimetry
Data yield heat and gas removal requirements to control the desired process chemistry
Battery Safety

Testing to support safe design of batteries and electrical power backup facilities particularly to satisfy UL9540a ed.4

Safety Data Sheets

Develop critical safety data for inclusion in SDS documents

Cable Testing
Evaluate electrical cables to demonstrate reliability and identify defects or degradation
Equipment Qualification (EQ)
Testing and analysis to ensure that critical equipment will operate under adverse environmental conditions
Water Hammer
Analysis and testing to identify and prevent unwanted hydraulic pressure transients in process piping
Acoustic Vibration
Identify and eliminate potential sources of unwanted vibration in piping and structural systems
Gas & Air Intrusion
Analysis and testing to identify and prevent intrusion of gas or air in piping systems
ISO/IEC 17025:2017

Fauske & Associates fulfills the requirements of ISO/IEC 17025:2017 in the field of Testing

ISO 9001:2015
Fauske & Associates fulfills the requirements of ISO 9001:2015
Dust Hazards Analysis
Evaluate your process to identify combustible dust hazards and perform dust explosion testing
On-Site Risk Management
On-site safety studies can help identify explosibility and chemical reaction hazards so that appropriate testing, simulations, or calculations are identified to support safe scale up
DIERS Methodology
Design emergency pressure relief systems to mitigate the consequences of unwanted chemical reactivity and account for two-phase flow using the right tools and methods
Deflagrations (Dust/Vapor/Gas)

Properly size pressure relief vents to protect your processes from dust, vapor, and gas explosions

Effluent Handling

Pressure relief sizing is just the first step and it is critical to safely handle the effluent discharge from an overpressure event

FATE™ & Facility Modeling

FATE (Facility Flow, Aerosol, Thermal, and Explosion) is a flexible, fast-running code developed and maintained by Fauske and Associates under an ASME NQA-1 compliant QA program.

Mechanical, Piping, and Electrical
Engineering and testing to support safe plant operations and develop solutions to problems in heat transfer, fluid, flow, and electric power systems
Hydrogen Safety
Testing and consulting on the explosion risks associated with devices and processes which use or produce hydrogen
Thermal Hydraulics
Testing and analysis to ensure that critical equipment will operate under adverse environmental conditions
Nuclear Safety
Our Nuclear Services Group is recognized for comprehensive evaluations to help commercial nuclear power plants operate efficiently and stay compliant
Radioactive Waste
Safety analysis to underpin decomissioning process at facilities which have produced or used radioactive nuclear materials
Adiabatic Safety Calorimeters (ARSST and VSP2)

Low thermal inertial adiabatic calorimeters specially designed to provide directly scalable data that are critical to safe process design

Other Lab Equipment and Parts for the DSC/ARC/ARSST/VSP2 Calorimeters

Products and equipment for the process safety or process development laboratory

FERST

Software for emergency relief system design to ensure safe processing of reactive chemicals, including consideration of two-phase flow and runaway chemical reactions

FATE

Facility modeling software mechanistically tracks transport of heat, gasses, vapors, and aerosols for safety analysis of multi-room facilities

Blog

Our highly experienced team keeps you up-to-date on the latest process safety developments.

Process Safety Newsletter

Stay informed with our quarterly Process Safety Newsletters sharing topical articles and practical advice.

Resources

With over 40 years of industry expertise, we have a wealth of process safety knowledge to share.

World Leader in Process Safety

Fauske & Associates uses a data-backed approach to solve complex process safety problems and prevent or mitigate accidents in the chemical and nuclear industries. We provide custom solutions including site assessments, full service testing, engineering, simulation, consulting, and training to nearly every industry from food processing to power generation.

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Our Process Safety Experts Share Decades of Experience in Hazard Assessment and Testing

SITE EVALUATION

A site evaluation brings our safety experts to your facility to collaborate with your team in reviewing existing practices, equipment, and procedures. We determine your risk level and suggest ways to quantify or reduce risk, which often requires data on plant specific materials such as accumulated dust or reactive chemicals.

TESTING IN OUR LABS

Our state-of-the-art process safety laboratory provides critical data on combustible dust, gas, or vapors, or on any reactive chemical hazards identified during a site evaluation.  We perform experimental simulation of credible "worst case scenarios" and can demonstrate the efficacy of proposed process improvements.

ISO/IEC 17025:2017

ISO 9001:2015

PROVIDING SOLUTIONS

Based on the results of lab testing, we prepare a detailed report including our recommendations for process improvement, employee training, documentation, etc.  If new safety systems are required, we work with you and vendors to develop an effective solution.  

Solutions

  • Process Hazards Analysis & Testing Services
  • Emergency Relief Systems Design
  • Process Scale-Up & Equipment Sizing
  • Radioactive Waste Decommissioning
  • Safe Storage & Transportation
  • Facility Modeling, Plant Services, and Energy Storage
vsp2wscreen

VSP2

The innovative design of the Vent Sizing Package 2 (VSP2TM) was developed by FAI in the 1980’s under the DIERS research program to address the need for an adiabatic calorimeter with low thermal-inertia and a well-mixed sample (~80 ml). 

 

The VSP2 is suitable for directly scalable simulation of process upsets and runaway chemical reactions, functioning as a mini thin-wall chemical reactor enclosed in a protective containment vessel. Continuous pressure-temperature data during a chemical runaway facilitates parametric variation of relief set pressure when analyzing the adequacy of an existing pressure relief vent.

arsst

ARSST

The Advanced Reactive System Screening Tool (ARSSTTM) is a low thermal-inertia screening calorimeter, developed as a simplified alternative to the VSP2.

 

The ARSST quickly provides pseudo-adiabatic and directly scalable data for characterizing thermal and decomposition hazards using a smaller but still well-mixed sample (~10 ml) in a vented spherical glass test cell.  It is ideal for energetic and gas generating reactions, and the data are amenable to simplified vent sizing methods.

ferst-graph

FERST

The Fauske Emergency Relief Sizing Tool (FERST) powered by CHEMCAD is practical software designed to help you ensure that your chemical processes are adequately protected against overpressure from process upsets and runaway chemical reactions.

 

FERST is the complete package combining a practical and easy-to-use interface, straightforward calculation methods, the direct use of temperature and pressure rise rates from low ф-factor calorimetry data, industry standard DIERS two-phase flow models, and the material property, thermodynamic, and software development expertise from ChemstationsTM.

Our Process Safety Experts Share Decades of Experience in Hazard Assessment and Testing

Dust Explosion Hazards

A manufacturing company recognizes that there is dust in their process and is motivated by OSHA regulations to ensure their facility is safe.  They work with FAI to perform a DHA and identify a number of locations where dust can accumulate.  Samples are collected and tested at the FAI safety lab.  Test results are used to prioritize housekeeping and process changes, and to install properly sized safety systems to mitigate potential dust explosions.

Process Scale-Up

An innovative new chemistry is developed in the lab and there is pressure to scale-up to production as quickly as possible to take advantage of market opportunity.  What could go wrong?  Post-accident investigation noted that the process was scaled directly from 1 liter to almost 10,000 liter without recognizing the runaway reaction hazard potential and with an emergency relief system that was incapable of relieving the pressure from an unintended secondary exotherm following failure of the cooling system.

Radioactive Waste Cleanup

Decommissioning at a legacy government site is taking longer than planned, and an innovative approach is needed for safe packaging and storage of radioactive debris that accumulated over decades in an aging fuel storage pond.  Oh, and the material is chemically reactive and generates hydrogen.  A passive hydrogen venting design is invented and tested at full scale in the FAI flammability lab, enabling accelerated waste retrieval and direct storage in shielded boxes without an expensive processing facility.

Power Uprate

An extended power uprate (EPU) at a nuclear plant led to unanticipated vibration in the main steam line.  FAI collaborated with the utility, the valve vendor, and the Westinghouse BWR acoustic group to identify the root cause as vortex shedding in the main steam isolation valve (MSIV).  FAI performed 1/5 scale tests which reproduced the Helmholtz instability and demonstrated that the problem was solved by simply adding "teeth" to the valve seat rings.  The plant installed this fix and achieved full EPU.

Testing Solutions

At Fauske & Associates, we offer custom testing and modeling services to validate analysis, quantify hazards, and help keep you safe.

Flash Point

Flash point is the minimum temperature at which vapors from a liquid pool form an ignitable mixture with air. Results help characterize a liquid as either being flammable or combustible based on the criteria of the NFPA, EPA, OSHA, or UN and identify the packaging and shipping group for transportation purposes in addition to storage and handling requirements.

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Autoignition

Autoignition temperature is the lowest temperature at which a gas or vapor will spontaneously ignite without a distinct ignition source. This flammability property depends on various factors including pressure, temperature, oxidizing atmosphere, vessel volume, and fuel/air concentration.

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KST and PMAX

The explosion severity test generates the KST and PMAX values which are the explosive properties used to characterize a dust explosion. KST represents the normalized rate of pressure rise of a combustible dust and PMAX represents the maximum explosion overpressure. These data tell you how much pressure an explosion will generate and how fast the explosion will travel.

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MIE

The minimum ignition energy (MIE) is the minimum amount of spark energy needed to ignite  an explosion of a dust in a suspended cloud. It is performed using ASTM E2019, “Standard Test Method for Minimum Ignition Energy of a Dust Cloud in Air” or EN13821 “Potentially explosive atmospheres — Explosion prevention and protection — Determination of minimum ignition energy of dust/air mixtures”.

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Vent Sizing

Vent sizing by direct scaleup requires adiabatic data from low thermal inertia devices like the VSP2 and ARSST.  Measured rates of temperature and pressure rise during a thermal runaway define the volumetric rates of vapor and gas which must be discharged under emergency relief conditions, and these are readily applied to process scale using ERS design tools such as FERST which accounts for two-phase flow.

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Thermal Stability

Our thermal hazards lab has a variety of instruments to test the thermal stability of condensed phase materials, including the ARC, DSC, TGA, TAM, and C80, and we are experts at using tools like AKTS software to evaluate process safety parameters such as time to maximum rate (TMR) and self accelerating decomposition temperature (SADT).

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LIRA

The Line Resonance Analysis (LIRA®) cable condition monitoring test provides both an indication of the overall cable health and as well as locally degraded areas. It is a non-destructive examination (NDE) tool that does not over-stress the cable.

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Custom Testing

We have the experience and facilities to provide custom testing to solve your unique process safety problems. Our campus has multiple laboratories for testing chemical reactions, dust or vapor explosions, piping hydraulics, and electrical integrity. Our consultants will work with you to design a testing program to get the data you need to keep your process safe.

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