Use of the modified controlled atmosphere cone calorimeter for the assessment of fire effluents generated by burning wood under different ventilation conditions

摘要

Summary The ISO 5660‐1 cone calorimeter is an affordable, practical, and commonly used solution for the measurement of main fire properties of products and materials. Among its chief drawbacks is its limited ability to reproduce combustion conditions found in real fires. This deficiency is mainly due to its inability to control oxygen availability in order to simulate an underventilated fire. As several toxic or potentially toxic species are formed primarily in oxygen‐poor conditions, the controlled atmosphere cone calorimeter (CACC), now defined in ISO 5660‐5, is a major improvement when trying to study the toxicity of fire effluents. A proposed additional modification of the CACC via the introduction of chimney sampling ports and oxygen sensors improves the reproducibility and veracity of effluent sampling. This approach allows the implementation of various techniques to sample, collect, and analyze the generated fire effluents. In this study, the experimental set‐up was used to capture fire effluents generated by burning wood under different ventilation conditions. A gas chromatograph coupled with mass spectrometer was used to assess and compare the chemical composition of the collected samples. The results obtained with the new experimental set‐up proved the ability of the system to reproducibly generate fire effluents under various controlled burning circumstances. It could prove useful as a tool in characterizing the toxicity of fire effluents from various materials on a benchtop scale and ultimately contribute data for the numerical modeling of toxicity of fire effluents in real buildings.