Vision of the MTU Hazards Evaluation Laboratory

1. Needed data is frequently lacking, of low quality, or proprietary.

2. Opportunities exist to improve the fundamental nature of these properties.

3. Opportunities are available to improve equipment and procedures based on improved computer control / data acquisition.

The initial efforts in the laboratory will be to acquire existing equipment to improve the quality of data and to extend the range of data available. This equipment will involve properties related to flammability (flash point, flammability limits, auto ignition limits) and reactivity (self heat rate, maximum pressure rise). This effort will also look at properties of mixtures. For reactive systems, efforts will be directed towards developing a single thermodynamic function to include both temperature and pressure rate effects. These studies will improve our fundamental understanding of those properties.

Future efforts will develop new methods and procedures to improve the characterization of the properties of hazardous materials.

We keep in touch with industrial concerns through our Safety Advisory Board:

• Gerald Boicourt, BASF Corporation

• Kris Chatrathi, Fike Corporation

• Simon Chippett, Union Carbide Corporation

• Greg Dickson, The Dow Chemical Company

• Ron Darby, Texas A&M University

• Tom Hoppe, CIBA-Geigy

• Ian Nimmo, Honeywell

• Jack E. Maddox, Dow Corning Corporation

• Ann M. Norberg, 3M

• Mike Pegg, Technical University of Nova Scotia

• Bob G. Perry, AIChE

• J. Bruce Powers, The Dow Chemical Company

• Joseph Senecal, Fenwal Safety Systems

• Jack Wehman, BASF Corporation

• Faculty at MTU:
  • J. James Brozzo
  • Daniel A. Crowl
  • Edward R. Fisher
  • Michael E. Mullins
  • Tony N. Rogers
  • Anton J. Pintar

Members of the Hazards Lab Group

• Dr. Dan A. Crowl

• Chad V. Mashuga

• Eric D. Larson

• Piyush B. Parikh

• YunYing Fan

Research Summary

Automated Flammability Limits Study - Chad Mashuga

For complete information about the Flammability Limits Study, please follow up the link to Chad Mashuga's homepage.



Reactive System Screening Tool

The RSST is a adiabatic pseudo bomb calorimeter which measures the rise in the temperature rate generated by the formation of an exotherm. We plan to use the equipment (which was purchased by BASF for our use) to determine the potential hazards associated with the production of polydimethylsiloxane (which is currently undertaken in the Unit Operations Laboratory). We might expand the study to include other chemicals. We hope to use factorial experiment design to determine the minimum number of experiments needed to characterize a reactive system in order to optimize screening studies.



ARC - YunYing Fan

The ARC is similar to the RSST and also used for screening reactive systems only it is much more sophisticated (and expensive) and is capable of tracking the formation of the exotherm. It is useful for determining kinetic data of the system.



Flash points of Azeotropic Binary Mixtures - Eric Larson



Safety and Environmental Risk as part of Conceptual Design - Piyush Parikh

For complete info Safety and Environmental Risk as part of Conceptual Design - Programming Tool, please follow up the link to Piyush Parikh's homepage.

For More Information...

Electronic Email

• Dr. Dan A. Crowl (crowl@mtu.edu)
• Chad V. Mashuga (cvmashug@mtu.edu)

• 906/487-2195 Laboratory
• 906/487-2896 Office

This page is maintained by Chad Mashuga. It was last updated on 10/27/96.