A Study of the Parameters Influencing Liquid Fuel Burning Rates

Abstract

An understanding of the mass burning rate of a fuel and the factors affecting this rate is paramount when assessing the hazards associated with a liquid fuel spill/pool scenario. To date, the vast majority of mass burning rate data originate [1,2] from liquid fuel fire scenarios where the fuel layer is ‗deep'. However, recent studies [3,4] have shown that, for thin fuel layer scenarios, the maximum mass burning rate achieved is on the order of one-fifth that presented for these ‗deep' scenarios. This study investigates the factors affecting the mass burning rate of several different liquid fuels using both fixed area and unconfined fire scenarios. A test program comprised of over 500 small-and large-scale tests was conducted on various substrates using various fuels. The results of the study demonstrate a dependence of the mass burning rate on both duration of fuel supply and substrate, among others. Correlations were developed to modify the peak mass burning rates as a function of fuel supply duration (which can be depth). The impact of substrate relative to the thermal properties of the substrate is also discussed.

Spread and burning behavior of continuous spill fires

“…In these models, it is obvious that the fuel consumption due to burning is crucial in the spread process, and the quasi-steady burning is directly determined by the burning rate of the spill fire for a certain discharge rate [9]. However, the burning rate of pool fires is directly considered that of spill fires in some cases, even though this has been proved wrong by Gottuk et.al [10] and Mealy et al [11]. They found that the burning rate of spill fires is lower than that of pool fires and in some situations the ratio of the spill fires' burning rate to that of pool fires is less than 0.5.…”