In order to ensure the safety of inflammable and explosive chemical substance such as nitrocellulose (NC) mixtures in the process of handing, storage, and usage, it is necessary to obtain the fire properties of NC with different exterior structures. In present study, fire properties of two commonly used nitrocelluloses with soft fiber structure and white chip structure were investigated by scanning electron microscope (SEM) and the ISO 5660 cone calorimeter. Experimental findings revealed that the most important fire properties such as ignition time, mass loss rate and ash content exhibited significant differences between the two structures of NC. Compared with the soft fiber NC, chip NC possesses a lower fire hazard, and its heat release rate intensity (HRRI) is mainly affected by the sample mass. In addition, oxygen consumption (OC) calorimetry method was compared with thermal chemistry (TC) method based on stoichiometry for HRRI calculation. HRRI results of NC with two structures obtained by these two methods showed a good consistency.

In this article, a study is reported on the ignition of timber board by an incandescent light. A set of experimental tests were conducted to demonstrate the possibility of such an event. Inference was then made to the possible cause of a fire incident that occurred at a building construction site a few years ago. Theoretical analysis was also conducted based on an ignition model. The model is able to correlate the time to ignition with the distance between the light bulb with a given power output and the timber board.

Due to the lack of effective methods to determine the cause of thermal runaway of lithium-ion batteries (LIBs), many fires are wrongly classified as LIBs fires. In this paper, we conducted different types of LIBs experiments to study the stage of thermal runaway and the distribution of combustion products. Through experiments analysis, we discovered for the first time the characteristic elements associated with the cause of thermal runaway of LIBs in the solid combustion products. Under overcharge conditions, the aluminum element was detected for the combustion products. The main reason is that a large amount of metal oxides precipitated from electrode materials react with aluminum foil at high temperatures to form alumina (Al2O3). However, under heating conditions, the aluminum element was not detected because of the lack of sufficient conditions for thermite reactions. The conclusion was verified by multiple sets of repeated experiments.

No abstract