Hazards Analysis, Code Compliance & Procedure Development

Services to identify process safety hazards and facilitate compliance with established standards and codes.

Combustible Dust Testing

Laboratory testing to quantify dust explosion and reactivity hazards

Flammable Gas & Vapor Testing

Laboratory testing to quantify explosion hazards for vapor and gas mixtures

Chemical Reactivity Testing

Laboratory testing to quantify reactive chemical hazards, including the possibility of material incompatibility, instability, and runaway chemical reactions

ISO Accreditation and Scope
Fauske & Associates fulfills the requirements of ISO/IEC 17025:2017 in the field of Testing
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 safety handle the effluent discharge from an overpressure event

Thermal Stability

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

UN-DOT

Classification of hazardous materials subject to shipping and storage regulations

Safety Data Sheets

Develop critical safety data for inclusion in SDS documents

Biological

Model transport of airborne virus aerosols to guide safe operations and ventilation upgrades

Radioactive

Model transport of contamination for source term and leak path factor analysis

Fire Analysis

Model transport of heat and smoke for fire analysis

Flammable or Toxic Gas

transport of flammable or toxic gas during a process upset

OSS consulting, adiabatic & reaction calorimetry and consulting

Onsite safety studies can help identify explosibility and chemical reaction hazards so that appropriate testing, simulations, or calculations are identified to support safe scale up

Mechanical, Piping, and Electrical

Engineering and testing to support safe plant operations and develop solutions to problems in heat transfer, fluid flow, electric power systems

Battery Safety

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

Hydrogen Safety

Testing and consulting on the explosion risks associated with devices and processes which use or produce hydrogen

Spent Fuel

Safety analysis for packaging, transport, and storage of spent nuclear fuel

Decommissioning, Decontamination and Remediation (DD&R)

Safety analysis to underpin decommissioning process at facilities which have produced or used radioactive nuclear materials

Laboratory Testing & Software Capabilities

Bespoke testing and modeling services to validate analysis of DD&R processes

Nuclear Overview

Our Nuclear Services Group is recognized for comprehensive evaluations to help commercial nuclear power plants operate efficiently and stay compliant.

Severe Accident Analysis and Risk Assessment

Expert analysis of possible risk and consequences from nuclear plant accidents

Thermal Hydraulics

Testing and analysis to ensure that critical equipment will operate under adverse environmental conditions

Environmental Qualification (EQ) and Equipment Survivability (ES)

Testing and analysis to ensure that critical equipment will operate under adverse environmental conditions

Laboratory Testing & Software Capabilities

Testing and modeling services to support resolution of emergent safety issues at a power plant

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

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Recent Posts

NFPA 652 Immediate Action Items: Combustible Dust Hazards

Posted by The Fauske Team on 06.14.16

By Ursula Malczewski, Chemical Engineer,  Risk Management, Fauske & Associates, LLC

In the fall of 2015, the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) issued its first edition of NFPA 652: Standard on the Fundamentals of Combustible Dust, 2016 Edition. This new standard establishes the relationship and hierarchy between it and the industry specific standards (NFPA: 61, 484, 654, 655, 664) to ensure that fundamental requirements are consistently addressed across industries, processes and dust types. Below is a summary of how this standard affects you and your combustible particulate solids handling process.

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Figure 1 - NFPA 652 Immediate Action Items

Your Responsibility
The owner/operator of a facility (you) with potentially combustible dusts is responsible for determining whether the materials are combustible or explosible. The absence of previous incidents cannot be used as the basis for deeming a particulate to not be combustible or explosible.

Any facility handling/generating dusts, powders, or materials that during processing are found to break apart into smaller pieces may in fact be dealing with a combustible particulate solid. This means that these facilities are required to determine if the material they handle is combustible or explosible. If so, the owner/operator (you) is responsible for characterizing the properties of the material as required to support the Dust Hazard Analysis (DHA). The DHA must then be completed within 3 years of the effective date of this standard (by September 2018).

Determination of Combustibility and Explosibility
The determination of combustibility and explosibility is based on:
(1) Historical facility data or published data that are deemed to be representative of current materials and process conditions; or
(2) Analysis of representative samples by testing.

It should be noted that a material can be combustible but not explosible, explosible but not combustible or both combustible and explosible. If the combustibility or explosibility is not known, determination of these properties must be determined by standard-specified tests. These tests must be performed on representative samples based on the sampling plan.

The location of sampling is critical to obtaining meaningful results. The finest particles in your process represent the highest hazard. These tend to collect in dust collectors and on elevated surfaces.

It is permitted to assume a dust is combustible and/or explosible and proceed with all protections mandated by the standard, negating the need to perform the determination. However, further testing will need to be conducted in either case in order to determine the necessary safety protection systems specific to the material and process. The findings (test results, historical data, and published data) shall be documented and, when requested, provided to the authority having jurisdiction (AHJ). Your AHJ may include OSHA, your insurance company, or your fire marshal.

Next Steps
Where dusts are determined to be combustible or explosible, controls to address the hazards associated with the dusts must be identified and implemented. The process will need to have a technical safety basis including equipment protection, controls, and safeguards identified in order to ensure that future fires and explosions can be prevented or mitigated. The owner/ operator of the facility (you) is responsible for identifying and assessing any fire, flash fire, and explosion hazards (performing a DHA), managing the
identified fire, flash fire, and explosion hazards, and communicating the hazards to affected personnel in accordance to the standard.

If explosible dust is present in your facility or handled in your process, several management systems need to be in place to manage this hazard. Implementing a combustible dust management program will include all of the retroactive requirements of NFPA 652 (Figure 2).

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Figure 2 - NFPA 652 Requirements

If materials are determined to not be combustible or explosible, the owner/operator (you) is required to maintain documentation to demonstrate that the dusts are not combustible or explosible. Your work here is done – for now…

In both cases, if/when there is a change in your process that causes a change in your material (new raw material or product, change
in supplier, etc.) or its environment (temperature, residence time, exposure to gases or other materials, etc.), new testing may be necessary to determine if the combustibility and explosivity properties have changed and what, if any, precautions are now required.

For additional information on determination testing, onsite dust hazard analysis (DHA), and implementing a combustible dust management program or to find out more about how this and other NFPA standards apply to your process, contact Theis@fauske.com, 630-887-5211

References
1. NFPA 652 (2016) Standard on the Fundamentals of Combustible Dust, 2016 Edition. NFPA, Quincy, MA.

Topics: Combustible Dust, explosive dust, fire hazard, dust hazard, combustible hazard, hazards analysis, explosion hazard, Management of change, flash fire, dust risk, 652, NFPA, DHA, combustibility, hazard awareness, explosible dust

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