STUDIES ON COMPARTMENT FIRES-EFFECT OF VENTILATION

Abstract

The growth of an industry is dependent on technological advances. This is especially true in chemical industry, which is entering an era of more complex processes: higher pressures, more reactive chemicals, and exotic chemistry. Chemical presents a very substantial hazard due to fires and explosions. Perceptions of safety engineers about fire hazard and protection properties depend upon several variable of tangible or intangible nature. Here we tried to calculate such parameters which are useful to understand the fire phenomena. The objective of this study was to investigate the behaviour of liquid pool fires under multi ventilation conditions in compartment and how it differs from single ventilation conditions. Total six experiments were conducted to measures characteristics of methanol fires: burning rate, gas temperature, and heat released by the fuel in a cubic compartment of outside dimensions 2.79mX2.20mX1.62m. The experiments were carried out for compartments with single ventilation opening as well as with two-ventilation opening. Methanol was burned in trays of three different sizes, for each ventilation conditions. The rate at which energy and products of combustion are released may change with time and depends on ventilation conditions. The burning rate of the fuel and gas temperature also depends on the ventilation as well as locations in the compartment. These data have been used to show how predictive tools such as CALTREE [Kumar,2004], a simple pre-flashover mathematical model to predict temperatures in compartment with single ventilation opening, can be used to predict behaviour of fire in the compartment having two ventilations openings. It is also observed that the rate of burning and temperatures in compartment having two vents are higher than those in single ventilation condition for larger fire size. The experimental data generated in the present study can also be utilized for validation of zone as well as field models for compartment having one vent as well as for compartment with two vents.