Burning characteristics and smoke emission from mixed fuel cribs

Published

March 21, 2025

Author(s)

Aika Davis, Thomas Cleary, Ryan Falkenstein-Smith, Rodney Bryant

Abstract

Experiments were conducted to study the burning characteristics and smoke emission from mixed fuel crib assemblies designed to represent the main components in structures. Cribs consisting of wood lumber, oriented strand board, gypsum wallboard, acrylonitrile butadiene styrene, polyurethane, and polyvinyl chloride were assembled into cubic structures with the same mass fractions of the materials. Three different packing densities were investigated for two crib sizes, nominally 0.028 m^3 with 1.91 cm wide sticks and 0.113 m^3 with 3.81 cm wide sticks. Cribs were ignited from the top, continuously weighed during the experiments, and burned to completion. The smoke was collected in a fire calorimetry hood ventilation system for the heat release rate (HRR), combustion gases, and soot. We observed that the peak HRR and the average effective heat of combustion decreased and the burning time increased as the packing density increased for both crib sizes. The modified combustion efficiency (MCE) decreased as the packing density increased. The yields of CO, formaldehyde, acrolein, SO2, and total hydrocarbons tended to increase with increasing crib packing density and decreasing MCE, with the exceptions of soot, NOx, and HCN, which show no clear trend, and CO2, which shows a decreasing trend as expected.

Citation

ACS ES&T Air

Pub Type

Journals

Download Paper

https://doi.org/10.1021/acsestair.4c00275

Local Download

Keywords

structure fire, smoke emissions, mixed fuel crib, oxygen consumption calorimetry, FTIR

Citation

Davis, A. , Cleary, T. , Falkenstein-Smith, R. and Bryant, R. (2025), Burning characteristics and smoke emission from mixed fuel cribs, ACS ES&T Air, [online], https://doi.org/10.1021/acsestair.4c00275, https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=958532 (Accessed May 12, 2026)

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