Research on Explosion Characteristics of Sulfur Dust and Risk Control of the Explosion

As dust explosion is a major risk factor threating the safety of sulfur production, evaluating and controlling the hazards of sulfur dust produced in the wet process are very important. Several characteristic parameters including minimum ignition temperature, minimum ignition energy, lower explosive limit, maximum explosion pressure, explosion index, limit oxygen concentration of sulfur dust were determined and investigated by the experimental device such as hot plate, Godbert-Greenwald furnace, Hartmann tube, 20L spherical container of explosive testing. The experimental results indicated the influence rules of particle size, water content and concentration on the explosion characteristics of sulfur dust. The results showed that sulfur dust could be lighted easily and had high explosibility. The explosion risk and strength of sulfur dust decreased with the increase of the particle size. The minimum ignition energy and the minimum ignition temperature increased as the water content increased. The maximum explosion pressure and the explosion index rose at first and went down latter as the dust concentration increases. Prevention and control measures of sulfur dust explosion, from two aspects of building control and process control, were proposed for production, storage and transportation process of sulfur produced in the wet process.