Fighting Smoldering Fires in Silos – A Cautionary Note on Using Carbon Dioxide to Inert

This communication seeks to draw attention to the hazards of releasing liquid carbon dioxide into environments where an ignitable atmosphere may exist. Static discharges have sufficient energy to ignite flammable vapors and an internal explosion may result when fighting smoldering fires using this approach.
A recent article in Biomass and Bioenergy examines an explosion in a Norwegian wood pellet silo when attempting to suppress a smoldering fire with CO₂. The article argues that the electrostatic hazard of CO₂ is widely under-appreciated and incidents like this are avoidable.