Study of hybrid mixture explosions

The work of this thesis aims at studying the explosive phenomenon of hybrid mixtures to get insights into the driving mechanisms and the explosion features affecting the course of hybrid mixture explosion. This is achieved by means of an extensive experimental study that developed in the following steps: - Measurement of the ignitability and the explosion severity; - Study of the flame propagation. The explosion experiments were performed in a 20 l Siwek bomb; instead, the flame propagation experiments were performed in a new equipment: a tube of 1 m length and 7x7 cm square. The hybrid mixture under examination was a mixture of methane and nicotinic acid in air. Results allow the definition of four different regimes of the gas/dust/air mixture explosion in the plane dust concentration vs. fuel concentration. And the flame propagation behaviour of the mixture gives a further contribution to the explanation of the different regimes.