CFD Analysis of Mine Fire Smoke Spread and Reverse Flow Conditions

Details

• Personal Author:
  Edwards JC ; Hwang, Charles C.
• Description:
  A Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) program was used to model buoyancy induced Product-Of-Combustion (POC) spread from experimental fires in the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), Pittsburgh Research Laboratory (PRL), safety research coal mine. In one application, the CFD program was used to predict spread from fires in an entry under zero airflow conditions. At a location, 0.41 m below the entry's roof at a distance of 30 m from the fire, the measured smoke spread rates were 0.093 and 0.23 m/s for a 30 and a 296 kw fire, respectively. The CFD program predicted spread rates of 0.15 and 0.26 m/s based upon the measured fire heat production rates. Based upon a computation with c3h8 as the hydrocarbon fuel, a predicted 5 PPM co alert time of 70 s at a distance of 30 m from the fire is to be compared with the measured alert time of 148 s. In a second application, the CFD program was used to analyze smoke flow reversal conditions, and the results were compared with visual observations of smoke reversal for 12 diesel fuel fires. The CFD predictions were in qualitative agreement with visual observations of smoke reversal. [Description provided by NIOSH]
• Subjects:
  Coal Coal Mining Mining Occupational Health Safety
• Keywords:
  Coal-mining Fire-safety Mine-fires Mining-industry Smoke-control Underground-mining Ventilation Ventilation-equipment Ventilation-systems
• Series:
  Mining Publications
• ISBN:
  1887009043
• Publisher:
  University of Missouri-Rolla Press
• Document Type:
  Text
• Genre:
  Proceedings
• Place as Subject:
  Missouri ; OSHA Region 3 ; OSHA Region 7 ; Pennsylvania
• CIO:
  National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH)
• Division:
  PRL - Pittsburgh Research Laboratory
• Topic:
  Workplace Safety & Health
• Location:
  North America
• Pages in Document:
  417-422
• NIOSHTIC Number:
  nn:20024905
• Citation:
  Proceedings of the Eighth US Mine Ventilation Symposium, Rolla, Missouri, June 11-17, 1999. Rolla, Missouri: University of Missouri-Rolla Press, 1999 Jun; :417-422
• Editor(s):
  Tien JC
• Federal Fiscal Year:
  1999
• Peer Reviewed:
  False
• Collection(s):
  National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health
• Main Document Checksum:
  urn:sha-512:f9c16514f55a706a84f924e03459b741bdefb4254f86de0a78926f03b300f08a8bd2630a02f7ebc380f6658a623b12c9f6611adfdca06d03fd0147ca3d358c5a
• Download URL:
  https://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/220863/cdc_220863_DS1.pdf
• File Type:
  [PDF - 1.47 MB ]