A Method to Prevent CO Poisoning from Instantaneous Water Heaters

Abstract

-Instantaneous water heater being not properly installed and not adequately maintained may produce fatal accidents due to carbon monoxide poisoning and suffocation. Insufficient supply of air into the gas appliance for complete burning of the fuel or blocking the outlet of the combustion gas could be a cause to increase carbon monoxide concentration in the exhaust gas of the gas appliance. In this work, the experiments are done with a collected instantaneous water heater using in domestic and the concentration of oxygen near the gas appliance and carbon monoxide in exhaust gas are observed to investigate the risk of instantaneous water heater. The concentration of oxygen near the gas appliance is reduced until 17.7% for the ratio of the ventilation area and floor area being 3.5%. If the outlet of combustion gas is blocked, the carbon monoxide concentration is steeply increasing more than 4,000ppm. Therefore, periodic checking the outlet of combustion gas is more important than vent area to reduce the risk of carbon monoxide poisoning.