CHEMICAL ENGINEERING TRANSACTIONS VOL. 43, 2015 A publication of The Italian Association of Chemical Engineering Online at www.aidic.it/cet Chief Editors: Sauro Pierucci, Jiří J. Klemeš Copyright © 2015, AIDIC Servizi S.r.l., I SBN 978-88-95608-34-1; I SSN 2283-9216 Quick Assessment of Explosion Hazard in Small Premises Andrea Dusso* a , Stefano Grimaz a , Ernesto Salzano b a SPRINT-Lab - Università degli Studi di Udine, via del Cotonificio, 114 - 33100 Udine, Italy b Istituto di Ricerche sulla Combustione, CNR, Via Diocleziano 328, 80124 Napoli, Italy andrea.dusso@uniud.it Workplace safety and emergency procedures require the identification of explosion risks. For this reason, EU Directives as ATEX (Atmosphere Explosives) normative have been specifically issued, with the aims of protecting worker safety, properties, environment and population. Besides, the cited law requires strong expertise and knowledge of the complex science involved in explosion phenomena, which is not straightforward in small and medium enterprises. Indeed, a large amount of published work concerns explosion hazard in large-scale industrial environment, whereas there is a clear lack of studies concerning the risk assessment of explosion in small premises like laboratories, workshops, garages and others. In this work, a management tool for small premises that allows the identification of explosion hazard through a rapid screening of the workplace and the recognition of a limited number of indicators, as the properties of material stored or manipulated and the adopted mitigation systems, has been developed. The tool is essentially based on the maximum quantities of flammable substances and allows the quick assessment of explosion hazard starting from the visual screening or inspection of the workplace. 1. Introduction The occurrence of the explosion phenomenon should be always considered when evaluating the safety of workplaces where flammable or unstable solid, liquid and gaseous substances are stored or handled. This destructive phenomenon may be characterized by several effects affecting the exposed targets (workers, assets, equipment): mechanical effects (air shock, debris), thermal effects (flames), dispersion of partially oxidized and combustion products, which are often toxic. Furthermore, the explosion can trigger secondary adverse events as fires of large-scale solid or liquid combustibles, which in turn may produce cascading effects in the surrounding equipment or buildings. Fire and explosion safety in workplaces, buildings and premises is a major concern of European legislation, in particular through the ATEX Directives 1994/9/EC (1994) and 1999/92/EC (1999). The first determines the essential safety requirements for products intended for use in potentially explosive atmospheres, while the latter establishes obligations on the employer to protect the safety and health of employees potentially at risk from explosive atmospheres. The application of these Directives is demanded to the national states, but a sound application requires the knowledge of the complex chemical and physical phenomena involved, which generally cannot be found in small and medium enterprises. Just as an example, the methodology called GriSU (Grimaz and Pini, 1999), an expert system conceived for the fire safety assessment and management in historical centres, has been considered too complex for widespread application. Furthermore, there are very few studies concerning the assessment of fire and explosion hazard in small premises like laboratories, workshops, or other similar civilian system. In this paper, a management tool that allows the identification of fire and explosion hazards through the rapid screening of the system, based on the recognition of the amount and characteristics of hazardous substances within the cited premises, has been developed. The tool aims at the preliminary assessment of safety performance of the analyzed system and may be usefully adopted for the definition of hazard maps covering the workplace and to manage the hazards by choosing among effective technical and organizational countermeasures, tailored on the specific needs of the premises, according the scheme proposed by Grimaz et al. (2014). The tool may also be useful to plan emergency response. DOI: 10.3303/CET1543316 Please cite this article as: Dusso A., Grimaz S., Salzano E., 2015, Quick assessment of explosion hazard in small premises, Chemical Engineering Transactions, 43, 1891-1896 DOI: 10.3303/CET1543316 DOI: 10.3303/CET1543316 Please cite this article as: Dusso A., Grimaz S., Salzano E., 2015, Quick assessment of explosion hazard in small premises, Chemical Engineering Transactions, 43, 1891-1896 DOI: 10.3303/CET1543316 1891