The National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) is in the process of clarifying and consolidating all combustible dust standards into a single standard. Currently designated as NFPA 660: Standard for Combustible Dusts, the all-encompassing standard will be completed in 2024 and likely released in late 2024/early 2025. Though still two years away from implementation, it’s not too early for facility owners and operators to gain an understanding of what the new standard is designed to provide and accomplish and what will happen to the information in NFPA 652 and other current dust standards, all of which will go away upon NFPA 660’s release.
NFPA 652 is one of six current combustible dust standards that outline requirements for handling various types of dust (additional NFPA documents provide design requirements for equipment and facilities). As its full name denotes, NFPA 652: Standard on the Fundamentals of Combustible Dust is the standard for dust basics and is a good starting point for combustible dust standards, best practices, and the requirements for a dust hazard analysis (DHA). The other five standards, all of which are commodity-specific, are: