Explosion Protection Assessments & Dust Hazard Analysis
If your facility handles combustible dust, you need a dust hazard analysis (DHA) — lab-certified testing, explosion protection engineering, and inspection-ready documentation, all required under NFPA 660. We deliver complete DHA services for manufacturing facilities across the Southwest.
Your dust hazard analysis is the foundation of everything NFPA 660 requires. It identifies the combustible dust hazards in your facility using lab-tested data — not assumptions — and determines exactly what explosion protection your operation needs.
Without a current DHA, you can’t properly size venting, suppression, or isolation. You can’t document compliance for your fire marshal or insurance carrier. And you can’t answer an OSHA inspector who asks for one — which, under the Combustible Dust National Emphasis Program, they increasingly do. Whether you call it an explosion protection assessment, analysis, or audit, this is the document that answers the question.
Every DHA and explosion protection system we design is backed by our pass-or-free compliance guarantee. If it doesn’t pass inspection, we fix it at no charge.
Not sure whether you need a DHA? If your facility generates dust from wood, metal, food, pharmaceuticals, plastics, or any organic material, you almost certainly do. Schedule your free site assessment and we’ll tell you for sure.
The Dust Explosion Pentagon
A dust explosion needs all five of these elements at once. Take any one away and you prevent it. Your DHA identifies which elements are present in your operation and how to eliminate or control them.
Fuel
Combustible dust particles — your material’s KSt value determines how severe an explosion could be.
Oxygen
The ambient air in your facility provides the oxidizer. Inerting systems can drop oxygen below ignition thresholds.
Ignition Source
Sparks, hot surfaces, static discharge, friction. MIE testing measures how little energy it takes to ignite your dust.
Dispersion
Dust suspended in air at the right concentration. MEC testing determines the minimum explosive concentration for your material.
Confinement
An enclosed space — collector, duct, silo, or room — that lets pressure build. Pmax testing measures the maximum explosion pressure.
Remove one. Stop them all.
Your protection plan targets the elements you can actually control in your space — that’s what the DHA maps out.
What Happens During Your Dust Hazard Analysis
Your DHA follows the same five steps whether you run a metal fabrication shop with one grinder or a pharmaceutical plant with dozens of dust-generating processes.
Dust Sample Collection & Lab Testing
We collect representative dust samples from your operation and send them to an accredited lab for the full battery of tests: KSt (explosion severity), Pmax (maximum pressure), MEC (minimum explosive concentration), MIE (minimum ignition energy), MIT (minimum ignition temperature), and LIT (layer ignition temperature). These numbers drive every protection decision you’ll make.
On-Site Facility Survey
We walk your facility end to end to identify every dust-generating process, evaluate your existing dust collection equipment, inspect ductwork and electrical systems, and audit housekeeping. We document ignition sources, accumulation patterns, and any areas where a secondary explosion could occur.
Risk Assessment & Scenario Analysis
Using your lab data and facility survey, we map every credible explosion scenario — from primary deflagrations inside collectors to secondary explosions from dust on overhead surfaces. Each scenario gets a risk rating and a mitigation recommendation you can act on.
Protection System Engineering
Based on your results, we engineer the right protection: deflagration venting sized to your KSt per NFPA 68, chemical suppression, isolation valves to stop flame propagation through ductwork, and spark detection. Our dust collection engineering team folds every protection into the overall system design.
Complete DHA Report & Documentation
You receive a comprehensive, inspection-ready DHA report: every lab result, every risk assessment, the recommended protections, implementation timelines, and the documentation your fire marshal, insurance carrier, and OSHA inspector need to see. This is the document that proves your compliance under NFPA 660.
Wondering what yours will cost? We break it down transparently in our DHA cost guide.
Explosion Protection Built Around Your Dust
Your DHA determines which protection method — or combination — is right for your operation. There’s no one-size-fits-all answer; it depends on your dust’s KSt, your facility layout, and whether your collector sits indoors or outdoors.
Deflagration Venting
Explosion vent panels sized to your KSt per NFPA 68. The most common and cost-effective protection for outdoor-mounted baghouse and cartridge collectors. Panels release pressure safely during a deflagration, preventing structural failure.
Chemical Suppression
High-speed systems that detect and extinguish an explosion in under 100 milliseconds — before it can fully develop. The answer when venting isn’t possible due to indoor placement, proximity to occupied areas, or highly reactive dusts like those in pharmaceutical or battery manufacturing.
Explosion Isolation Valves
Mechanical or chemical isolation devices in your ductwork that stop a flame front from traveling between connected equipment — keeping a collector deflagration from running back into your building. Required under NFPA 69 for most ducted systems.
Flameless Venting
Mesh retention systems that relieve pressure while containing flame and burning particles. The fix for collectors that must sit indoors but can’t use chemical suppression — common in food manufacturing and wood manufacturing plants.
Spark Detection & Extinguishing
Infrared sensors catch sparks and embers in your ductwork upstream of the collector, triggering a water-spray extinguish before the material reaches the filter media. Essential for welding and metal fabrication, CNC machining, and grinding.
Wet Collection
For highly reactive combustible metals like titanium, aluminum, magnesium, and zirconium, dry collection is often too dangerous. Wet collectors capture the dust in water, eliminating the explosion risk entirely. Often required by NFPA 660 for aerospace and metal-processing operations.
Standards Your DHA Must Address
NFPA 660
The consolidated combustible dust standard, effective January 1, 2026. It replaces NFPA 652, 654, 61, 484, and 664, and requires a DHA, explosion protection, housekeeping programs, and documentation for every facility with combustible dust. Get your free NFPA 660 checklist →
OSHA Requirements
The Combustible Dust NEP, the General Duty Clause (Section 5(a)(1)), 29 CFR 1910.94 ventilation, and 1910.307 hazardous locations. OSHA points to the NFPA standards as the benchmark for compliance.
NFPA 68 & 69
NFPA 68 covers deflagration venting design and sizing. NFPA 69 covers explosion prevention — suppression, isolation, and inerting. These are the engineering standards that turn your DHA findings into actual protection.
What If Your DHA Reveals Gaps?
Most facilities we assess have gaps. That’s normal — the standards have moved fast, and many systems were designed before NFPA 660 existed. A DHA that turns up problems isn’t a failure. It’s the first step in fixing them.
We wrote a detailed guide for exactly this moment: what to do when your DHA reveals compliance gaps — with real costs, timelines, and the common mistakes to avoid.
The worst outcome isn’t a DHA that finds problems. It’s never getting one and learning about the gaps during an OSHA inspection — or after an incident.
Need a full system, not just a DHA? Many facilities discover during the analysis that their existing dust collection can’t meet the standard. When that happens, our engineering team designs a complete replacement — explosion protection built in from the start. See our 2026 cost guide for what to expect.
DHA Services for Manufacturing Facilities
Your material drives your explosion characteristics — a wood-dust DHA looks nothing like an aluminum-dust DHA. We run DHA services for manufacturing facilities across every major combustible dust category. Find yours below.
DHA & Explosion Protection Questions
Ready to Get Your DHA Done?
Tell us about your facility and you’ll get a DHA proposal with scope, timeline, and a firm quote — backed by our pass-or-free guarantee. No pressure, no runaround.
Serving manufacturing facilities across Arizona, California, Nevada, New Mexico, and Utah.