Assessing levels of hydrogen cyanide in fire experiments using a generalized correlation

Abstract

A generalized relationship between the normalized yields of carbon monoxide and hydrogen cyanide for nitrogen-containing materials has recently been derived. This correlation is used in the current study to analyze experimentally derived hydrogen cyanide data from three sets of fire tests. For a reduced-scale compartment fire test, the yields of hydrogen cyanide with varied equivalence ratios and the transient hydrogen cyanide concentrations are estimated; for a series of room-corridor sofa fire tests, the extremely high hydrogen cyanide level observed is demonstrated to be a realistic result and a hydrogen cyanide yield value of 0.047 g/g is suggested for this sofa in post-flashover fires for fire safety assessments; and finally, for a series of smoke chamber tests with polyurethane, possible causes for the failure to detect hydrogen cyanide are suggested. Language: en