| dc.description.abstract | Dust explosions can cause the most serious and widespread of explosion hazard which can have irreversible impacts on properties, environment, and lives. Thus it becomes imperative to understand dust explosions is a much detailed and lucid way. Several studies have been done in the past focusing on Dust explosions. Though researchers have worked and tried to understand the impact and consequence of the dust explosion, limited work has been done to decouple the role of parameters affecting the dust explosion like dust’s morphology, concentration, density, etc. The current experiment aims to explain the role of change in morphology and change in density in a dust explosion by studying the dust cloud dynamics.
The current experiment is divided into two parts-first finding the role of morphology in a cloud dynamics and other roles of density in the cloud dynamics. For morphology experiment two aluminum dust samples (spherical and irregular) with similar size distribution, polydispersity and chemical composition are taken and the density experiment, two common industrial dust, one with high density and other with low density is taken. Soda-lime glass (SLG) is taken as high dense dust and Polymethyl Methacrylate (PMMA) is taken as low dense dust. For both the experiments, the dust particles are dispersed in the Kühner MIKE3 MIE apparatus and the dust cloud is analyzed by Digital Inline Holography (DIH) Technique. The experiment has shown that irregular shaped particle has a higher concentration in the dust cloud than spherical shaped particles. Moreover, irregular shaped particles tend to stay in the air for a longer duration than spherical shaped particles. In density experiment it was concluded that less dense samples had more dust particles in the dust cloud and could be suspended in the air for a longer duration, making less dense particles more susceptible to a dust explosion. This study helps in highlighting the role of two of the most important parameters in dust explosion namely, shape and density. This understanding will help in developing a more viable and potent mitigation measure. | en |
