“…For high dust concentrations, maximum explosion pressure is imposed by the oxygen content and the increase of volatile content, promoted by Table 1 Characteristic parameters of methane gas combustion (Eckhoff, 1997;Hertzberg, Zlochower, & Cashdollar, 1986;Kawakami, Okajima, & Iinuma, 1988) Adiabatic temperature (K) 2250 Limit flame temperature (K) 1450 Su max (m/s) 0.45 Sf max (m/s) 2.6 Auto-inflammation temperature (8C) 580-620 Lower flammability limit (% v/v) 5 Table 2 Characteristic parameters of cork dust explosion (Campos, Lemos, & Borges, 1988;Pilão, 2002;Pilão et al, 2002a,b) Maximum explosion pressure ( the methane addition, does not have any reflection on the increase of the maximum explosion pressure because the combustion development proceeds near the stoichiometric concentrations. However, because the rate of pressure rise has a strong kinetic component it will be expected an increase of this parameter with the rise of the methane content in the atmosphere, but such is only observed for 3.5% (v/v) of methane.…”