Re: DIG-L: RE: exploding digesters?

[Simm <simm@mozcom.com>]

I agree with everything below but I would like to add on the first
sentence. There was an explosion in 1996 at a "biogas farm" in Austria.
Apparently basic safety rules were violated. But no evidence or no rather
clear relation between the presence of that biogas plant and that incident
was found. At first, minor panic came up within the biogas community
whether rules would be tightened, but nothing like that happened afterwards. 

Anthony Simm

At 10:37 PM 02/27/2000 -0000, you wrote:
>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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>
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