On June 3, 2013, a disastrous fire accident, which killed 121 people and injured 76, occurred in a poultry slaughterhouse in Jilin Province of China. The initial fire resulted from the short circuit of electric wires and further resulted in the explosion of the ammonia pipes. Approximately 15 tons of ammonia was released during this accident. It was reported that most of the victims were injured or dead due to the leaking ammonia. The released ammonia had also affected the firefighting action and other rescue activities of the firefighters. The most contentious issue during the investigation of this fire event was whether the combustion or explosion of the released ammonia had occurred during this accident. After extensive investigations and weeks of debate, an agreement could not be reached among the investigation experts. To resolve this impasse, this study mainly focused on the stable combustion of mixtures of ammonia and its dissociation products at atmospheric temperature and pressure to compare with the results available in the open literature. The experimental results could also provide some valuable evidence for the investigation of similar fire accidents in the future.
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