Guidelines for identifying and mitigating thermal hazards of sustainable materials

Abstract

Sustainable materials and technologies (a.k.a. “green”) are those that are “delivered with progressively less negative impact upon the Earth.” Thermal hazards such as self‐heating, thermal runaway, fires, and explosions may be associated with a particular sustainable material or process technology. Thermal hazards are a result of the interaction between the exothermic reactivity of the material and the processing or storage conditions (e.g., environment, temperature, duration, size, and configuration). These materials and technologies may pose thermal hazards that only become apparent at large‐scale production and storage levels. With the move toward developing sustainable materials and technologies, many potential new hazardous scenarios for established organizations or for start‐up companies may be identified only during final developmental stages. For example, scaling processing up from pilot to full‐scale may lead to large enough material volumes that thermal hazards that were not identified at the pilot level become significant. Another example may be the increased size of stockpiles of materials required for full‐scale operations. This article aims to provide an overview of several sustainable materials and green technology areas with a discussion of the potential thermal hazards presented. The article will provide guidance for identifying potential thermal hazards in systems and for developing successful prevention and mitigation schemes against fires and explosions. © 2011 American Institute of Chemical Engineers Process Saf Prog, 2011

RDF Fire and Explosion Hazards at Power Plants

“…Some manufacturers claim that RDF pellets can be stored for up to 3 years without significant biological or chemical degradation [5,15,18,20,24,[40][41][42][43][44][45], but the operational experience of the authors and RWE Generation shows that these claims are supposed rather than supported; hence, they can be misleading and potentially dangerous (Figure 2). To date, many studies have shown that the problems associated with RDF pellets have been due to factors such as the poor quality of the product.…”

“…RDF fires are notoriously difficult to detect and extinguish when in enclosed storage spaces and can last for days or even weeks [3,7,8]. Additionally, under conducive circumstances, the effluent from RDF deep-seated smoldering fires can lead to explosions [1,2,7,[9][10][11][12][13][14][15]. Until the recent introduction of BS EN ISO 21912:2021 [10], which covers the safe handling and storage of solid recovered fuels, there was no specific guidance on fire protection.…”

“…The potential for RDF self-heating seems to vary considerably and can be affected by a wide range of factors, such as: producer/manufacturer; batch; segregation process; and season (this is mainly due to the unpredictable nature of the MSW received at sorting centers). Other factors such as ageing and/or degradation (due to different material handling methods), storage type and localized environment can additionally affect the fuel's characteristics [2,6,11,12,[14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24].…”