Detonation flame arrester

This Detonation Flame Arrester is being tested for an 8 inch piping system at Brooker Laboratory Testing Company to the USCG 33cfr154.1325 Standard.

The largest detonation flame arrester ever built at the time and most likely still is, weighing 10 tons, for 36 inch pipe. Pictured with Dwight Brooker

A detonation flame arrester (also spelled arrestor) is a device fitted to the opening of an enclosure or to the connecting pipe work of a system of enclosures and whose intended function is to allow flow but prevent the transmission of flame propagating at supersonic velocity and characterized by a shock wave. ( designed to prevent the transmission of a detonation).

Inventors

The first patented detonation flame arrester was developed by Nicholas Roussakis et al., U.S. Patent 4,909,730 and was issued on March 20, 1990. Its need was initially driven by new environmental legislation, namely the Clean Air Act of the USA. Regular flame arresters had been around for years, but they had very limited applications.

There have been at least a dozen more since then. A few are as follows;

• Nicholas Roussakis & Dwight E Brooker, U.S. Patent 5,415,233 issued May 16, 1995
• Dwight E Brooker, U.S. Patent 6,644,961 issued Nov 11, 2003
• Dwight E Brooker, U.S. Patent 6,699,035 issued Sept 6, 2004
• Dwight E Brooker, U.S. Patent 7,056,114 issued June 6, 2006

Standards

• ISO/TC 21/WG 3 (ISO 16852)
• EN-12874
• USCG 33cfr154.1325
• CSA-Z343 Flame Arrester Standard

See also

• Flame arrester
• Flashback arrester