Explosion Protection For The Dairy Food Industry

Fires and Explosions in the European dairy Industry were becoming an increasing problem. In the early 1990's two groups of people from industry, insurance providers and suppliers of protection equipment came together to analyse events and case studies, to find a new approach to solve the persistent problem.

The first now statistically confirmed finding was that the problem really was a fire hazard rather than a problem belonging to the area of explosion hazards. The analysis of a statistic database on 116 incidents in the milk powder processing industry showed that five of these incidents experienced an explosion, while another three had explosion like effects that could be traced to pressure effects of an explosion. The remaining incidents were fires only, with damages ranging from medium to total loss of the drying unit.