Fuel Volatility Effects on Pool Fires in Compartments with Low Ventilation

Pool fires in low ventilation compartments give rise to ghosting flames and their toxic and particulate emissions were investigated for 400mm square pool fires in a 1.6 m3 compartment with ventilation of 0.035 kg/m2s, air mass flow rate per pool surface area. These conditions produced global compartment equivalence ratios that were rich and this did occur for kerosene and heptane , but diesel and toluene only achieved near stoichiometric conditions. The low ventilation produced low ceiling temperatures of between 380 and 480°C with the highest temperature for diesel and the lowest for heptane. Particulate mass emissions were highest for kerosene at 6.5 g/kgf and lowest for heptane at 0.9 g/kgf. Soot emissions were lowest for heptane at 0.2 g/kgf and highest for kerosene at 5 g/kgf. These are relatively low soot emissions, due to the low fire temperatures for near stoichiometric combustion. These low temperatures were mainly due to low combustion efficiencies with high CO and HC yields.