HRR Upgrade to mass loss calorimeter and modified Schlyter test for FR Wood

Abstract

Enhanced Heat Release Rate (HRR) methodology has been extended to the Mass Loss Calorimeter (MLC) and the Modified Schlyter flame spread test to evaluate fire retardant effectiveness used on wood based materials. Modifications to MLC include installation of thermopile on the chimney walls to correct systematic errors to the sensible HRR calculations to account for radiant energy losses to the chimney walls. Additionally, pure ethylene glycol for low flame radiant losses and the PMMA for high flame radiant losses supplanted the use of methane for calibrating the sensible HRR. The FPL 3 MW HRR hood facility, updated with fast and accurate O2, CO2, and CO gas analyzers, was shown to provide accuracy within 0.5 kW as determined with the pure ethylene glycol burned in the MLC under the HRR hood. Thus the performance measure in the modified Schlyter fire test has been objectively determined with the HRR measure of upward fire growth, rather than based on the manually observed maximum flame height. Using the MLC for initial Fire Retardant (FR) screening and the modified Schlyter flame spread test for emulating severe fires should provide a low cost approach to evaluating fire retardant effectiveness.

Citation

Dietenberger, Mark A.; Boardman, Charles R. 2013. HRR Upgrade to mass loss calorimeter and modified Schlyter test for FR Wood. In: Proceedings of the Fire and Materials 2013 Conference held at the Hyatt Hotel Fisherman’s Wharf Hotel, San Francisco, CA, USA 28-30 January 2013. pp. 251-263.