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Outdoor Gas Emission Sampling System: A Novel Method for Quantification of Fires in Outdoor Conditions

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This study presents the design, construction and testing of an Outdoor Gas Emission Sampling (OGES) System capable of gas sampling and calorimetry in outdoor conditions with wind. In large-scale, outdoor fire tests, wind-driven emission plumes present a challenge in heat release rate quantification because the emission plume rises upward at an angle. A new gas sampling system with a flexible hood design and smaller control volume has been designed and tested. Bulk flow rate, oxygen, carbon dioxide, and carbon monoxide concentrations are measured for heat release rate calculations. Two stages of experimentation are described. Experiments at intermediate-scale (indoor only) that were conducted to evaluate the performance of a smaller control volume for measurements, and large-scale (indoor and outdoor) experiments, to demonstrate feasibility in realistic field conditions as well as the new flexible hood design. Experiments show that the OGES system is capable of calculating the heat release rate of pool fires with an accuracy of 23% using oxygen consumption (OC) and carbon dioxide generation (CDG) methods. Further improvements of the OGES system for outdoor field deployment are also discussed.

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  • English
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  • etd-050217-121733
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  • 2017
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  • 2017-05-02
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Permanent link to this page: https://digital.wpi.edu/show/fx719m569