Biomass storage and safety

Self-heating fires, dust explosions and off-gassing during biomass storage are serious hazards that can have devastating consequences, including worker fatality, health impacts, bioenergy plant destruction and complete loss of production.

• A compilation of incident reports from 2000–2018 revealed that these potential hazards continue to be a major concern.
• There has been a decreasing trend of dust explosions and off-gassing incident reports.
• There has been an increasing trend of reports related to self-heating fires and fires of uncertain cause.

Real-time pile temperature monitoring may offer a solution for reducing fire incidents.