Does the following sound familiar?
Your facility handles combustible dust, and you know that NFPA 652 requires the completion of a Dust Hazard Analysis (DHA). Calling a DHA provider has been on your to-do list, but it has yet to happen, perhaps because...
- You’re unsure about the logistics and duration of the visit.
- You don’t want to interfere your facility’s production schedule.
- You worry about the number of hazards that may be found during the visit.
This article intends to help alleviate any of your concerns regarding the DHA, what you can do to prepare for it, and what Fike will do to ensure your safety and business goals are met.
1. How a Fike DHA Visit Works
Depending on the size of your facility, a Fike DHA often requires one to three days on site to complete, but large facilities may take longer. Usually just one Fike DHA specialist will visit the location.
Duration: Depending on the size of your facility, a Fike DHA often requires one to three days on site to complete, but large facilities may take longer. Usually just one Fike DHA specialist will visit the location.
Production: The production process rarely needs to be stopped for the DHA to be conducted. In fact, the DHA specialist will likely want to analyze it while running, so they can have a proper understanding of the operation. However, there may be exceptions if process startup or shutdown create unique hazards that require analysis.
Point of Contact: At the beginning of the visit, the DHA specialist will meet with the facility’s health and safety manager or plant manager, who will usually serve as the point of contact throughout the DHA. He or she should be able to provide access to areas of the plant, connect the specialist with other facility experts, and answer many of the specialist’s questions or know whom to ask.
2. How to Prepare for a Fike DHA Visit
To ensure an efficient and productive visit, your team can help plan ahead by:
- Identifying and informing your team leads, such as engineers, operators and maintenance technicians of the upcoming DHA so they can provide valuable information about the production process.
- Collecting important documents such as facility layout drawings, process flow diagrams, OEM cut sheets, incident logs and more, all of which will help the DHA specialist not only determine which areas could be hazardous but also which are safe and may be ignored.
- Documenting the various types of materials handled, conveyed and stored throughout the process and their locations. Any unique mixtures should also be noted, as those may require dust testing if their explosibility values are unknown.
3. What Will Occur During a Fike DHA Walkthrough
Once the Fike DHA specialist has met with his or her point of contact and reviewed facility drawings and other resources, he or she will begin the plant walkthrough. During this process, you can expect the completion of the following steps:
- Inspect equipment for dust hazards by evaluating if the material is being handled in a way that can create a dust cloud in the equipment. This means understanding the particle sizes involved as well as the way the material is manipulated. It’s important to consider normal operations, start-up and shutdown, and potential upset conditions. The facility’s team leads will be critical in providing valuable institutional knowledge of the equipment.
- Identify potential ignition sources which may ignite a dust cloud, and determine preventative measures to reduce the risk of these ignition sources from ever occurring. Possible ignition sources include open flames, overheated surfaces, sparks, foreign objects from connected equipment, electrostatic discharges, and more.
- Review existing safeguards, such as explosion vents, suppression systems, isolation systems, fire suppression systems, rotary valves and more to ensure they are being used properly and remain compliant with the latest codes and testing standards.
- Inspect rooms and buildings for external hazards where dust may accumulate outside of the process, including on the ground, on overhead surfaces, on light fixtures and more. History has proven that some of the most devastating combustible dust explosions have occurred in part because of these secondary explosion hazards.
4. How Fike Will Help You Meet Your Business Objectives
When you hire Fike to perform your DHA, we will do everything we can to not only ensure the safety of your employees but also to protect your business’ financial wellbeing. By helping you meet all of your regional standards, you can avoid dust explosion-related fines and insurance premium increases. Finally, we can promise you the following:
- If explosion equipment is required, we will work with you around your budgetary needs and production schedule, and will prioritize the most hazardous areas
- If another solution exists that more inexpensively solves the problem, we will identify it.
- We will always look for opportunities for you to reduce your explosion risk, which are often organizational improvements which cost you nothing.
- We will never sell you equipment you don’t need; only when explosion protection equipment is required will we recommend it.