An innovative method for soot deposit quantification using a CO2 sensor: Application to fire studies in research facilities

Abstract

In industrial facilities handling or manufacturing hazardous materials, fires are one of the major hazards. Therefore, it is important to have tools to better understand the transport and deposition phenomenon of emitted particles in order to take into account their consequences on safety devices. For this purpose and due to the lack of quantitative soot deposition data under realistic fire conditions, an innovative method for soot quantification in experimental facilities devoted to fire research has been developed. This method is based on the quantification of gases emitted during regeneration of a resistive sensor surface and has a higher detection limit than the electrical conductance quantification method previously proposed and validated by (Kort et al., 2021). A proof of feasibility has been shown for two types of soot and a prediction curve has been proposed for deposited masses which vary between 16 and 350 μg (1304 mg m−2 and 28,525 mg m−2). The applicability of this measurement method to realistic industrial fire situation is finally verified taking into account the mean deposition mass per surface area observed in this context.