Measurement of minimum ignition energies of dust clouds in the <1mJ region.

The lower energy limit of current standard test apparatus for determining the minimum ignition energy (MIE) of dust clouds is in the range of 1-3mJ. This is a quite severe limitation because many dusts ignite readily at this energy level. A new spark generator, capable of producing synchronised sparks of very low energies and with an integrated system for measurement of spark energy, has therefore been developed and employed to a number of easily ignitable dusts. Before testing the MIE of dust clouds, it was considered essential to calibrate the new spark generator against a gas of known MIE. For this purpose, a mixture of propane and air was selected. However, a comprehensive literature review revealed that the reported MIEs of this gas mixture vary significantly, depending on the spark discharge characteristics, including discharge duration. When taking these factors into account, it was concluded that the new spark generator yielded reasonable results for propane/air. Applying the new spark generator to explosive dust clouds showed that a number of dusts do in fact have MIEs that are one to two orders of magnitude lower than 1mJ. The new spark generator may therefore offer a basis for developing a standard test apparatus in the low-energy region. When using a method of triggering the spark by the explosive dust cloud itself, which probably is a more industrially relevant process than synchronisation between the dust dispersion and sparkover, somewhat higher MIEs were found compared to those determined when using synchronised sparks. However, even with this method of spark triggering, MIEs below 1mJ were found.