The Effect Of Oxygen Concentration On Co And Smoke Produced By Flames

Abstract

A modified cone calorimeter with an enclosure has been developed for measuring the yield of combustion products including CO and smoke under vitiated conditions. The CO yields of methane, propane, PMMA, ABS, polyethylene, and Douglas fir are found to increase by at least a factor of two as the oxygen concentration is decreased from 21% to 14%, while the smoke yields are found to be insensitive to vitiation for the solid materials (less than 30% change). Results for air vitiated separately by nitrogen and by carbon dioxide suggest that the CO yield for a given fuel in a free burn is mainly controlled by the flame temperature. For ambient conditions, the CO yields for the solid samples are about a factor of 2.3 smaller than the smoke yields for all the solid materials studied.