Performance of New Smoke Alarms to a Range of Nuisance Cooking Sources in a Mock Kitchen

Published

September 24, 2024

Author(s)

Amy Mensch, Thomas Cleary, Emma Veley

Abstract

New smoke alarms that have passed the new broiling hamburger nuisance test introduced in ANSI/UL 217 Standard for Safety Smoke Alarms 8th Edition have reached the market. This cooking scenario was selected to be representative of cooking nuisance sources generally. The current study aims to compare the nuisance alarm resistance between older designs and new smoke alarms to a variety of cooking scenarios. A series of cooking experiments are conducted with an electric-coil cooktop and oven surrounded by mock cabinets and the smoke alarms mounted on ceiling panels in the mock-kitchen. A variety of smoke alarm types and models are tested, including four smoke alarm models that have passed ANSI/UL 217 8th Edition or later and six ionization, photoelectric, or dual-type models certified to the previous Edition. The results showed that the new alarms as a whole were not clearly superior in nuisance alarm resistance to the investigated cooking scenarios compared to the older designs. While the broiling hamburger nuisance test added in the 8th Edition may not be sufficient to represent a range of nuisance cooking scenarios, it does provide a performance baseline to ensure newer alarms that need to meet the more stringent flaming and smoldering fire tests are not overly sensitive to nuisance sources.

Proceedings Title

Proceedings of the 18th International Conference on Automatic Fire Detection (AUBE '24) & Suppression, Detection and Signaling Research and Applications Conference (SUPDET 2024)

Conference Dates

September 24-26, 2024

Conference Location

Duisburg, DE

Conference Title

18th International Conference on Automatic Fire Detection (AUBE '24) & Suppression, Detection and Signaling Research and Applications Conference (SUPDET 2024)

Pub Type

Conferences

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Keywords

Cooking sources, nuisance alarms, smoke alarms, ANSI/UL 217

Citation

Mensch, A. , Cleary, T. and Veley, E. (2024), Performance of New Smoke Alarms to a Range of Nuisance Cooking Sources in a Mock Kitchen, Proceedings of the 18th International Conference on Automatic Fire Detection (AUBE '24) & Suppression, Detection and Signaling Research and Applications Conference (SUPDET 2024), Duisburg, DE, [online], https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=958253 (Accessed October 14, 2025)