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Burning Behaviors of Thermoplastic Pellets in Pans Under Different Conditions

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Fire Science and Technology 2015
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Abstract

The objective of this study is to investigate the burning behaviors of a special kind of pool fire, whose liquid fuel is generated by the melting of thermoplastic particles. A series of experiments were carried out for PP and PE particles in square and circular pans with different heights. The results show that PS particles burn obviously faster than PP in both square and circular pans. The differences should be mainly attributed to their different heat fluxes from the flame under the same conditions. For the burning in circular pans, it shows that the burning rates are larger in higher pans for both PP and PS. Through the joint analyses on the 15 temperatures inside the pan for typical case, it suggests that the heat transfer through the inner way plays a more important role in the PS burning than PP. The reason should be the smaller specific heat capacity and larger thermal conductivity of PS than PP. Therefore, more heat will transfer from hot flame to the unburned fuel in the pan through the inner way for PS than PP. This is also the reason for the larger burning rate of PS than PP under the same condition.

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Abbreviations

ΔH g :

Change in enthalpy (J/g)

c p :

Thermal capacity at constant pressure (J/g.K)

L V :

Heat of gasification (J/g)

\( {\overset{.}{m}}^{{\prime\prime} } \) :

Mass loss rate per unit area (g/m2)

\( {\overset{.}{Q}}_{\mathrm{cond}}^{{\prime\prime} } \) :

Rate of conductive heat release from a flame per unit area (W/m2)

\( {\overset{.}{Q}}_{\mathrm{conv}}^{{\prime\prime} } \) :

Rate of convective heat release from a flame per unit area (W/m2)

\( {\overset{.}{Q^{{\prime\prime}}}}_F \) :

Heat flux to the surface from the flame (W/m2)

\( {\overset{.}{Q^{{\prime\prime}}}}_L \) :

Heat loss rate per unit area (W/m2)

\( {\overset{.}{Q}}_{\mathrm{loss}}^{{\prime\prime} } \) :

Heat loss to environment from a flame per unit area (W/m2)

\( {\overset{.}{Q}}_{\mathrm{rad}}^{{\prime\prime} } \) :

Rate of radiative heat release from a flame per unit area (W/m2)

T f :

Flame temperature (K)

T l :

Local temperature (K)

T s :

Evaporation temperature (K)

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China (No.51476157, 51120165001) and National Basic Research Program of China (973 Program: No.2012CB719701). The authors thankfully acknowledge all these supports.

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Correspondence to Qiyuan Xie .

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Xie, Q., Wu, T., Wang, N., Tu, R., Jiang, X. (2017). Burning Behaviors of Thermoplastic Pellets in Pans Under Different Conditions. In: Harada, K., Matsuyama, K., Himoto, K., Nakamura, Y., Wakatsuki, K. (eds) Fire Science and Technology 2015. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-0376-9_69

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-0376-9_69

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Singapore

  • Print ISBN: 978-981-10-0375-2

  • Online ISBN: 978-981-10-0376-9

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