Several regions in the United States have begun the process of obtaining preapproval to use in-situ burning as a remediation method for oil spills.The Building and Fire Research Laboratory of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) under the sponsorship of the Minerals Management Service has conducted a research program to study various aspects of this problem.One result of this program has been the development of a numerical model to predict the downwind concentration of smoke particulate and other combustion products from a large oil fire.To assess the accuracy of this model,data from three sets of experimental burns have been compared to model simulations run under similar meteorological conditions.The tests are (1) the Newfoundland Offshore Burn Experiment (NOBE),August 1993;(2) the Alaska Clean Seas Burning of Emulsions,September 1994;and (3) the U.S.Coast Guard/NIST Meso-scale Burn Series,October 1994.The model compared favorably with the experiments,increasing the confidence in numerical modeling as a tool to develop guidelines on safe distances from in-situ burns.
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