Accurate calculations of heat release in fires

Sylvain Brohez (1) , Christian Delvosalle (1) , Guy Marlair (2) , A. Tewarson (3)

1 Department of Chemical Engineering
2 INERIS - Institut National de l'Environnement Industriel et des Risques
3 Factory Mutual Research Corporation

Fire is often considered as the most hazardous accidental event which may affect safety in the chemical industries. The fire damage may be thermal or non thermal. As examples, the fire plume may transport a variety of toxic effluents, which may injure the staff of the industrial premises and the fire fighters, as well as the inhabitants in the neighbourhood. Intense radiation produced by big fires may cause serious burn injuries and generate "domino effects" to previously non affected equipment in the vicinity and result in related phenomena such as jetfires, fireballs, BLEVEs1 . Moreover, polluted extinction waters while unconfined may greatly affect the aquatic environment. Although several ambitious projects were recently carried out in the field, there is still much work to be performed to get validated techniques capable of predicting (and keeping under acceptable control) the consequences of indoor and outdoor large chemical fires.

Keywords: HEAT RELEASE; FIRES; OXYGEN CONSUMPTION; CARBON DIOXIDE GENERATION; SOOT

Domains: Engineering Sciences [physics]

Sylvain Brohez, Christian Delvosalle, Guy Marlair, A. Tewarson. Accurate calculations of heat release in fires. CHISA'98, Aug 1998, Prague, Czech Republic. ⟨ineris-00972138⟩