Summary: | The minimum ignition temperature is an important safety value for handling gases, liquids and dust. The European regulation only provides standards to measure single substances and single-phase values. That poses a problem to industries where materials in different phases occur at the same time, as there is no way to prove that the mixture does not have an ignition temperature that is not below the single values.
Aim of a research project is to provide an extension to the standard for the minimum ignition temperature of dusts (IEC 80079-20-2). Therefore, the Godbert-Greenwald oven is modified to allow testing dust, liquid and gas alone and in mixture with each other.
The proposed experimental setup is only a slight modification to the furnace mentioned in the standard. Main changes are the solvent reservoir and the additional gas supply. First results are already published as a proof of concept (Addai 2016a,b) and now, in a second step, extended by dusts premixed with solvents.
To provide a reliable base for a standardization the influence of these changes according to the ignition behavior will be tested in detail. This includes various size parameters as well as the arrangement of the parts, that will follow.
First the minimum temperature of the single phases - gas, steam of evaporated liquids, dust - are tested and compared to the respective values obtained with the standard to be usually be applied. Subsequently the mixtures of phases are tested.
The proposed setup would further provide the possibility to make tests to check the influence of other oxidizing atmospheres or the humidity in the gas phase.
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