Ageing effect on ignition sensitivity of lignocellulosic dust

Safety profiling of technical lignins originating from various bioresources and conversion processes

“…As reported quite recently [ 21 ], technical lignins, in the form of biomass more or less finely divided particles, is likely to behave in terms of risk of dust explosion, as a “non-traditional dust”, since liable to differ in terms of shape and morphology from the conventional spherical-like particles for which most of dust explosion phenomenon knowledge has been achieved so far. Therefore, SEM imaging was considered as an important aspect of our work to further assess how far technical lignins studied may vary from this endpoint.…”

“…It shall however be reminded that according to the Globally Harmonized System (GHS), lignins are classified as “combustible dust” with the associated official ‘hazard and precautionary statement’: “may form combustible dust concentrations in air”. As a summary of the our survey of useful literature and to our knowledge, no dedicated work has been performed yet to assess the physico-chemical properties of technical lignins in terms of influencing parameters of the safety profiles of these biomass resources of growing commercial interest, although it is worth to mention the recent work focusing on the ageing effect of biomass dust that may influence in time the properties of technical lignins studied in our work in terms of accidental ignition sensitivity [ 21 ]. In addition, some research has also been made as regard the influence of lignin source on its pyrolysis behaviour [ 22 ], but no conclusion can be anticipated from that work as regard the safety aspect.…”