Re: DIG-L: RE: exploding digesters?

["Les. Gornall" <les.gornall@dial.pipex.com>]

In 25 years of digester design, operation and building I have not seen a
digester explosion or been made aware of one in the UK or Europe.
I have been sprayed with sludge a few times and I did see the result of a
fire on a farm digester after a dept. of agriculture engineer cut a gas pipe
to fit a gas metering system for government monitoring purposes.  The cut
was under the boiler flue which ignited the gas - no explosion - the gas
line was shut off and the burn marks removed with a solvent.

In order to get an explosion you need a little bit of gas in a lot of air -
in digesters you nearly always get a lot of gas containing little air.  The
control systems shut down at low pressure and this means that any gas
escapes into the atmosphere where it is relatively safe.

The insurance companies looked at this area of risk in great detail and came
up with the final agreement - "for insurance purposes a digester from a
competent source is insured as an industrial low temperature boiler."

Best Regards



Les. Gornall
----- Original Message -----
From: Philip D. Lusk <plusk@pipeline.com>
To: WHITE John <John.White@state.or.us>
Cc: <digestion@crest.org>
Sent: Sunday, February 27, 2000 4:32 PM
Subject: DIG-L: RE: exploding digesters?


 > Dear John and Group/beginners

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