Abstract
Relief venting is one of the protective methods most commonly provided against dust explosion hazards. Safety design has so far been based upon the empirical vent ratio, S/V, the area of vent per unit volume of vessel. However, direct use of this term as a scale-up factor is not theoretically sound. A revised form of scale-up factor as to relief venting is proposed on the basis of the unsteady-state macroscopic energy balance and several assumptions. The derived results show that the relationship between vent area and vessel volume can be characterized by a dimensionless term which must be used instead of the conventional vent ratio. Calculated results based upon the theory agree fairly well with past experimental data.
