Performance and mechanism of bentonite in suppressing methane explosions in a pipeline network

Abstract

Methane explosions threaten the safety of industrial security in modern society. To suppress such explosions, experiments were made through using different masses of bentonite power driven by CO2 within a pipe network set up in an independent way. The three factors, including the peak over-pressure of an explosion, the index of the explosion power, and the time length within which the first wave of flames reached the pipe network’s outlet, were measured to evaluate the performance. Moreover, an analysis on the mechanism of suppressing explosions was also conducted. According to the results, a gradual increase of the powder mass from 20 to 50 g could promote the effect of explosion suppression, but a further increase from50 g to 60 g only led to a slight improvement of the performance. Thus, it was concluded that the use of 50 g of bentonite powder worked best for the suppression of methane explosions when environmental conservation, energy saving as well as practicality were all taken into consideration. What was found in this study is supposed to shed theoretical light on how to transport methane safely with disaster risks reduced effectively.