163 - Fire Fundamentals pt 11 - Soot in Fire Safety Engineering

Soot is perhaps the most complex product of combustion, and at the same time one of the most profound for our everyday fire safety engineering. The topic of soot is not getting much love in the world of fire science, so I’ve chosen to give you a broad introduction to this subject. In this episode of fire fundamentals we will go through:

·         Soot creation from chemical perspective;

·         Soot creation from practical perspective;

·         Soot effects on radiation, toxicity and obscuration;

·         Extinction coefficient and specific extinction coefficient;

·         Soot yield and surrogate value of soot yield for complex fuels.

If you would like to follow up on this episode with some reading, I highly recommend:

·         Bart Merci and Tarek Beji book „Fluid Mechanics Aspects of Fire and Smoke Dynamics in Enclosures”

·         Jose Torero lecture “Prof. Jose Torero - Fire: A Story of Fascination, Familiarity and Fear” available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cIY0litILRA&t=2082s

·         W. Węgrzyński and G. Vigne, Experimental and numerical evaluation of the influence of the soot yield on the visibility in smoke in CFD analysis – the paper with the source of our surrogate value of soot yield for complex fuels in fire safety engineering https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0379711217301327?via%3Dihub

·         G. Mulholland, C. Croarkin Specific extinction coefficient of flame generated smoke https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/1099-1018%28200009/10%2924%3A5%3C227%3A%3AAID-FAM742%3E3.0.CO%3B2-9

·         W. Węgrzyński, P. Antosiewicz, J. Fangrat, Multi-Wavelength Densitometer for Experimental Research on the Optical Characteristics of Smoke Layers, https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10694-021-01139-5

·         K. Börger, A. Belt, T. Schultze, L. Arnold, Remote Sensing of the Light-Obscuring Smoke Properties in Real-Scale Fires Using a Photometric Measurement Method, https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10694-023-01470-z

Thank you to the SFPE for recognizing me with the 2025 SFPE Fire Safety Engineering Award! Huge thanks to YOU for being a part of this, and big thanks to the OFR for supporting me over the years.

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