Volume, Temperature and Location of Smoke in Fires

Fires can be a major problem when they occur in industrial power generation facilities. The volume, temperature, composition of combustion product species, and location of smoke produced in fires may be calculated. A computer code is described that accomplishes this. Smoke cooling and volume changes are included from radiation heat loss from the fire, cooler air entrainment into the plume (column of smoke products above the fire), and conduction heat loss through the ceiling. Any hydrocarbon fuel, also possibly containing oxygen, is permitted as the fuel, and it burns with a specified equivalence ratio with air or oxygen. If in “air”, the volume fraction of oxygen may be specified. For simplicity and because most applications are to fires burning in air, dissociation is omitted since this is rather minimal at the temperatures encountered. The mathematical basis and algorithms are presented, together with the methodology of the Excel/VBA computer code that permits easy input and output, and results show the versatility of the code.