Development of a setup to study electrostatic discharges

Abstract

Two glass lined reactors in a launch platform facility operated by Syngenta have been damaged during a crystallization-process of an organic compound due to electrostatic discharges. The goal of this thesis was to design and commission a unique setup to measure charges and currents generated by such suspensions in a laboratory-scale reactor. These measurements made it possible to then calculate and estimate resulting discharge energies. An improved and more sophisticated setup was then proposed for possible implementation in their own laboratories. With this novel setup, the electrostatic charging of stirred suspensions involving non conductive solvents could be accurately measured in the context of a case study that involved the suspension that led to liner damages in the production facilities of Syngenta.