[Jewelry making - Article 00547] - Re: [Orchid] Dust and static electricity explosions

[Ian W. Wright]

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Hi LaVerne,

    The short answer is no. However, in an industrial context,
    'explosions' of polishing dust were quite common around here. Let me
    explain... Ordinary polishing 'dust' is not explosive as it is
    basically non-flammable, how ever, in industrial situations of the
    type we had around here at the height of the cutlery in dustry, every
    factory had large 'cyclone' dust extractors which sucked all the
    polishing 'dust' out into large circular bins hung on the outside of
    the factory wall. As the polishing debris contained lint and fibres
    which wore off the wheels and, in some factories, the cyclones also
    took the dust from grinding operations (a silly combination but it
    saved installing extra systems where the two operations were carried
    out alongside each other on the same bench), sparks from the latter
    sometimes set the cyclone bins on fire. As the polishing dust was
    basically coated in heavy grease, these fires usually only
    smouldered, making quite a bit of smoke but little flame - until the
    enthusiastic fire crew arrived to extinguish them! Why they never
    seemed to learn I will never know, but several times I have seen a
    fireman sent up his ladder to take the lid off the cyclone bin and
    squirt water into it. Of course, as soon as the lid was lifted, the
    dust inside was disturbed and sucked upwards and this, combined with
    the sudden inrush of fresh oxygen, made the bin flare up with a
    whoosh in a most spectacular manner, often taking the fireman by
    surprise and occasionally leading to burn injuries. So, in normal
    cases where only a small amount of polishing is being done and there
    is no mass storage of polishing 'dust', the chance of an explosion or
    even a fire, are minimal. 

Best wishes,

Ian
Ian W. Wright
Sheffield UK
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