Abstract
Annular pool fires, frequently happened in chemical industries, have a significant influence on environmental pollution. Air pollution, greenhouse gas emissions, water pollution, and soil contamination are general ways of environmental hazards caused by the annular pool fires. This study built upon our previous study (Environ. Sci. Pollut. Res., 2023, 30(21): 59781–59792.), and extended to investigate the combustion and fire plume flow behaviors of annular pool fires, both with and without air entrainment through the hollow center of the annular pool. Results show that when there is no air entrainment through the hollow center, the low combustion intensity area at the plume’s central axis gradually extends while the high combustion intensity area concentrates at higher places and the flame height increased by nearly 40% from a solid pool (Din/Dout = 0) to the annular pool (Din/Dout = 0.80). Additionally, the area with high combustion intensity is more concentrated at a higher position. The combustion of annular pool fires was found to be dominated by non-premixed diffusion combustion. The center of the annular pool fires is dominated by air prior to flame merging and by fuel vapor after the merging occurs. For annular pool fires with air entrainment through the center of the pool, the combustion intensity increases as Din/Dout at the plume base increases. And, the flame height decreased by nearly 25% as Din/Dout increases. Flame burning occurs both on the outside and inside of the plume, exhibiting a “double layer” combustion characteristic. It reveals that the combustion of the fire plume transitions to premixed diffusion combustion. The center of the annular pool fire is predominantly composed of air. Understanding and controlling annular pool fires can lead to new methods for remediating fuel spills, reducing pollution from combustion, and advancing research in fluid mechanics.
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Data availability
The data and materials used and analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.
Abbreviations
- cp:
-
Specific heat (kJ·kg−1 K−1)
- C:
-
Constant
- D*:
-
Fire diameter (m)
- Din:
-
Inner pool diameters (m)
- D out :
-
Outer pool diameters (m)
- g :
-
Gravitational acceleration (m·s−2)
- k :
-
Empirical coefficients
- \({\dot{m}}_{\alpha }\) :
-
The integrated volume of plume entrained air
- Q :
-
Heat release rate (kW)
- S :
-
Pool area (m2)
- ΔT :
-
Temperature difference between the flame and the ambient (K)
- \({T}_{\infty }\) :
-
Ambient temperature (K)
- u :
-
The normal component of the velocity of the flow field
- \({\rho }_{\infty }\) :
-
Air density (kg/m3)
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Funding
This work was supported by the Opening Funds of State Key Laboratory of Building Safety and Built Environment & National Engineering Research Center of Building Technology (BSBE2021–05), the Youth Innovation Project of Natural Science Foundation of Fujian Province (2022J05123, 2023J05104), National Natural Science Foundation of China (52211530486, 52006210), and the Opening Fund of State Key Laboratory of Fire Science (HZ2022-KF05).
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All authors contributed to the study conception and design. Ping Huang: Original draft, Methodology. Rui Zhang: Data curation, Formal analysis. Longxing Yu: Reviewing and Methodology. Chunxiang Liu: Funding acquisition and Supervision. Xinyue Wu, Dimin Chen, and Shanshan Chen: investigation and data processing. All authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.
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Huang, P., Zhang, R., Liu, C. et al. Burning and plume flow behaviors of annular pool fires: with and without air entrainment through the pool center. Environ Sci Pollut Res 31, 8012–8025 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-023-31385-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-023-31385-9