Call for Papers: Special Issue on Fire Hazards in Energy Systems

Submission deadline: 1st Feb, 2014

Given recent fire disasters like the oil train at Lac-Megantic or the 25th anniversary of Piper Alpha, the ongoing acceleration in energy demand and the new range of technologies introduced call for an in-depth examination of fire safety engineering in the production, storage and distribution of power.

Papers are invited as part of a special issue of Fire Technology devoted to the state of the art in fire science and technology related to energy systems. Of interest are research studies (experimental, computational, theoretical) and case studies that may contribute towards the understanding or the solution of engineering problems. The range of topics of interest is broad and interdisciplinary, and includes:

- Renewable energies (eg, biomass, wind, solar)

- Oil and gas (eg, LNG, onshore and offshore).

- Nuclear plants

- Energy storage (eg, batteries, hydrogen)

- Electrical and other distribution networks (eg, pipelines, rail, shipping)

- New technologies (eg, oxyfuel, tar sands, shale gas, sustainable buildings).

   Call for Papers: Special Issue in Fire Technology on *Fire Hazards in Energy Systems*

Editors of this issue:

Dr Guillermo Rein, Imperial College London, UK g.rein (at) imperial.ac.uk Dr George Boustras, European University Cyprus, g.boustras (at) euc.ac.cy

*Fire Technology* (http://www.springer.com/10694)

FT is the interdisciplinary journal by the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) and Springer, spanning the whole range of fire safety science and engineering. It is the oldest fire journal, publishing uninterruptedly since 1965. The aims are to provide and advocate for research and education in fire safety engineering, and reduce the worldwide burden of fire hazards.

Join us in Twitter: https://twitter.com/FireTechnology

*Paper Submission*

Authors are encouraged to submit high-quality, original work that has neither appeared in, nor is under consideration by, other journals. All open submissions will be peer reviewed subject to the standards of the journal. Manuscripts based on previously published conference papers must be extended substantially. The journal accepts three types of manuscripts (full papers, case studies and short communications). Letters to the Editor are also considered. Manuscripts should be submitted to: http://fire.edmgr.com. Please choose article type “SI: Fire and Energy Systems” when submitting.

Paper submission deadline: 1st Feb, 2014

Welcome Egle to Imperial Haze Lab

Egle, new PhD student

Yesterday was the first day of Egle Rackauskaite at Imperial College London as my new PhD student. She joins the Imperial Haze Lab in the Department of Mechanical Engineering.

Egle is a Civil Engineer (1st Class MEng, Loughborough University) originally from Lithuania. She also spent time at TU Dresden University working on computational analysis of structures.

The preliminary title of her thesis is "Building on the Paradigm Shift: Probabilistic Traveling Fires for Structural Design". As the title implies, her objective is to investigate how enhanced design-fires lead to improved fire engineering calculations and also how to contribute towards the probabilistic analysis of structures in fire. The work will be based on the recent paradigm shift in the field of fire and structures: travelling fires (see recent article in ENR or earlier blog post).

a) Illustration of a travelling fire. b) Resulting temperature-time curve for the thermal exposure of a structural element. From [Stern-Gottfried and Rein 2012]

The design concept of travelling fires was pioneered during 2007‐2012 by Jamie Stern‐Gottfried, Angus Law  and me while we were at the University of Edinburgh. Now at Imperial, I am keen to continue advancing the development of design concepts for structural engineers.

The project is funded by Arup and EPSRC (CASE Convert) and draws from the Memorandum of Understanding between Arup and Imperial College London to build on an already strong relationship in research, business and education. It specifically will contribute towards the named objectives of creating knowledge on “future city infrastructure” and of “doctoral training requirements for future city professionals”.

Article in Engineering-News Record on Travelling fires and WTC

WTC during the Sept 11 attacks. From wikipedia

An article on July 25th in the professional magazine Engineering-News Record [*] highlights recent applied research that I led on the behavior of fires inside modern buildings. 

We pioneered the design concept of 'travelling fires' which offers a paradigm shift in the structural engineering of modern buildings. The work is directly impacting the way industry designs modern infrastructure and has already been applied to design six iconic buildings in London, Manchester and Birmingham.

The research, funded by Arup while I still was at Edinburgh, accounts for one of the fastest cases of knowledge transfer to industry seen in fire science. Coincidentally, Arup has recently agreed to fund me at Imperial College London the continuation of this work with a PhD studentship.

[*] "9/11 Blazes Debunk Code Assumptions About FireBehavior in Open-Plan Offices" See IAFSS version here if you cannot access ENR.

Keynote: When the soil burns to ash, and smouldering episodes of haze

I gave this morning the first keynote lecture at the 4th International Meeting of Fire Effects on Soil Properties, in the pretty and small city of Vilnius. The title was "Fate of Organic Matter and Pyrogenic Char in Smouldering Fires: when soils burn to ash". I have posted a copy of my slides below.

I started by making a direct reference to the ongoing haze episode in South East Asia, caused by smouldering peat megafires. Like most organic soils, peat is flammable, and dry peat is extremely flammable. This haze episode is expected to last one or two more months, and is leading to a respiratory health crisis and hundreds of millions in economic losses in the region. I then did a quick overview of some smouldering fires as a way of illustrating different fire phenomena  (1997 Indonesia, 2006 Scotland, 2008 North Carolina). After an overview of what smouldering combustion is, I then made a case for these fires to be considered the largest on Earth (the most persistent and longest leading to the highest consumption of fuel). I  reviewed the chemistry of peat fires and some of the laboratory work we have conducted to study their horizontal and vertical spread, and the role of moisture content. The last bit is collaboration with soil chemists on the signature left by smouldering fire for paleoenviromental reconstructions of peat core. I concluded with my global views; that smouldering poses a possitive feedback loop for climate change in the Earth system, and that there is a acute need for more research on the topic.

   Fate of Organic Matter and Pyrogenic Char in Smouldering Fires: when soils burn to ash

The lecture was well received with plenty of good questions during the session and the coffee break. In particular I got this question from an American scientists of what would be the best conditions for the production of charcoal/char; it really inspired me and gave me an idea for an experimental and modelling research paper: what is the heat pulse (peak and duration) that leads to the largest production of i) charcoal and ii) char. My guess is that charcoal is maximized by a strong but short pulse (akin to a quick flaming front) whereas char is maximized by the quenching of a propagating smouldering front. 


NOTE: The difference between charcoal and char is that the former, we call it alpha-char, is produced at lower temperatures such that the shape of the original biomass can be identified, and the former, we call it beta-char, is produced at higher temperatures and the shape of the original biomass cannot be identified.

9/11 World Trade Center Attacks: Engineering Lessons After the Collapse of the Towers

I recently wrote an editorial on the 2001 World Trade Center attacks to introduce an incoming special issue in Fire Technology. It has now been published and can be read here (open access). I reproduce below an excerpt from it.

9/11 World Trade Center Attacks: Lessons in Fire Safety Engineering After the Collapse of the Towers

September, by Gerhard Richter 2005, at MoMA.

"Every engineering discipline has been shaken by tragic events at some point. Ralph W. Emerson (1803–1882) wrote that “We learn geology the morning after the earthquake”. Humans tend to identify gaps of knowledge after a catastrophe. Over time, progress and modern societies have established the means to set up major independent investigations after a technological disaster strikes. Their objective is to unearth the causes and learn lessons from the event so that similar catastrophes are avoided in future. In order for this to happen, it is essential that the results of the investigations are widely disseminated and that the scientific community carefully analyses them, critically assesses them and further improves the conclusions and lessons. This special issue invites the fire safety engineering community to just do that with respect to the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center (WTC) in New York.

WTC towers 1, 2, 5 and 7 collapsed because of the fires triggered by the attacks. From causes to consequences, this disaster touched on a wide range of scientific disciplines. Understanding it thus requires a multidisciplinary approach, and its most important elements are covered in this special issue".

[...]

"This is perhaps best illustrated by an example. In September 2011, 10 years after the attacks, the international magazine Scientific American published an article (“Castles in the Air”) on the WTC disaster’s effect on the design of new tall buildings. It concluded that high rise buildings needed to be kept away from aircrafts and should have means for prompt evacuation; it did not discuss protection from fire. However, WTC 1, 2, 5 and 7 collapsed because of the fires the attacks had triggered—they had resisted the aircraft impacts (WTC 5 and 7 were not even hit) and most of the occupants below the floors of impact were able to safely evacuate".

[...]

--

The full reference is: 

G Rein, 9/11 World Trade Center Attacks: Lessons in Fire Safety Engineering After the Collapse of the Towers, Fire Technology 2013 (in press). http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10694-013-0337-6

Likely sequence of events during West Fertilizer explosion, Texas

UPDATE: I have been quoted in Chemistry & Industry 77, May 2013

The cause for the recent incident at the West Fertilizer site in Texas is under investigation and remains unknown, but many parallels can be drawn from previous similar events involving large quantities of inorganic fertilizers.

Aftermath of the mass explosion following a fire in West, Texas, April 17, 2013.
Photo by REUTERS, Mike Stone.

It is the ammonium nitrate (AN) that poses the best known fire and explosion hazards in fertilizer storage sites, especially of the NPK fertilizer type (nitrogen, phosphorous and potassium). Some media outlets are speculating about exploding anhydrous ammonia tanks, but that is a very rare event not ever observed before. Unfortunately, mass fires and explosions in AN warehouse are not uncommon events (average worldwide frequency is about one every three years). One example, in 2001 the AN warehouse of a fertilizer plant in Toulouse, France, exploded resulting in 30 people dead and >2000 injured. The blast wave shattered windows up to 3 km away [source: wikipedia].

I am confident the Fire Service was aware that situation was very difficult and probably had a special emergency plan to deal with this particular site. They attended the fire to comply with their duty in the face of extreme danger. Their main priority would be to control the fire so it does not grow to the critical size when an explosion of AN could be triggered. The science behind a mass explosion following a fire in AN plants is still in bare bones, we know so little, and cannot be predicted. So imagine how difficult it is to deal with the emergency.

The source of the hazard is the exothermic decomposition of AN which begins around 200-230 ◦C. It has been suggested that it follows two reaction paths (the second is more exothermic):

NH₄NO₃→ N₂O + 2 H₂O

4 NH₄NO₃→ 3 N₂ +2 NO₂ +8 H₂O

(a) Unreacted NPK fertilizer granules and (b) cross section showing partially reacted sample with 4 phases visible. Photos from Hadden and Rein 2007.

The fire could have been initiated by self-sustaining decomposition (SSD). This is the phenomenon in which the temperature of a bed of AN-fertilizer rises due to spontaneous heat generation until thermal runaway leads to a fire. The flames would have had then spread to other flammable materials in the plant, like supplies, fuel, packaging, offices or vehicles. SSD of fertilizers is promoted by chemical compounds present in NPK and also the accidental contamination with organic materials. It can start at around 100 ◦C, which is a significantly lower temperatures than that required for pure AN decomposition.

A likely sequence of events is that an accidental heat source (e.g. hot work, hot surface, small fire) starts a SSD reaction in a bed on AN-fertilizer which slowly grows and leads to the fire that the Fire Service were battling. At some point, the flames grow faster than expected and rapidly heat very large quantities of AN, which leads to detonation (=explosion and blast caused by the very rapid decomposition of AN inside an enclosure).

A large detonation wave like this one devastates life and structures over a wide area around the point of origin. Moreover, the burning fertilizer becomes airborne with the explosion and lands further away igniting subsequent fires, as seen in the aftermath of this explosion.

---
Most of the information I used is from our 2007 paper:
- R Hadden, G Rein, Small-scale experiments ofself-sustaining decomposition of NPK fertilizer and application to events aboard the Ostedijk in 2007, Journal of Hazardous Materials 186, pp 731–737, 2011. doi:10.1016/j.jhazmat.2010.11.047. 

Interview in BBC Material World: coal self-heating

Last Thursday, between my two lectures on M2 Heat Transfer and M4 Combustion, I was interviewed by Quentin Cooper for BBC Radio 4 Material World.

You can hear the programme in the BBC podcast (we start from 14 min). A very nice expert on petrology was also invited to talk, Tony Milodowski, from the British Geological Survey.

Quentin was interested in learning about the science behind the recent news of a large fire in the coal mine of Daw Hill, the last remaining pit in Warwickshire, England. The first reports coming out say the initiating event was spontaneous ignition of coal. The fire developed quickly and a full evacuation of the mine was ordered. I was quick to mention that the longest continuously burning fire on Earth is The Burning Mountain in Australia, now a National Park, a coal seam that has been smouldering for more than 6,000 years. I always add at this point that at least the British cannot be flame for starting it.

Artistic illustration by E Burns 2008 of how I see that a smouldering coal fire could develop underground of a mine. The figure illustrate the spread of smouldering along the coalface and surface cracks of the seam, off gassing on the surfaces, subsidence and suppression attempts. I used this figure in the book chapter "Smoldering Combustion Phenomena and Coal Fires"

I talked about the phenomena of self-heating in a previous post after the biomass fire in Tilbury Power Plant. It refers to the tendency of certain materials, like biomass pellets and coal, to spontaneously heat up and smoulder starting from ambient temperatures. Self-heating can result in a spreading fire without intervention of any external ignition source. The topic is one of my fields of expertise. The problem can go undetected until the accident takes places.

NOTE: A substantial body of literature, not centered on combustion science, uses the term "spontaneous combustion" when referring to fires that started as self-heating. In rigorous terms, this is incorrect and misses the point of the key phenomena at play. The spontaneous process here is the heating that acts as ignition of a combustion reaction and leads to a fire; the combustion is not less spontaneous or fundamentally different than other smouldering or flaming phenomena.
 

Smouldering combustion in glowing coal embers, from Wikipedia.

The interview took place in the studios of the BBC, and one of the highlights of my day was to enjoy the stunning building that Broadcasting House is. It is pretty and smart from the outside (the inward curved entry, making a C shape, is marvelous) and comfortable and interesting in the inside (all transparent glass walls and soft lights). While touring the building a bit, I was lucky that one of the BBC Radio 4 staff members mentioned she was choosing the photo illustrating this interview for the podcast website, and I immediately offered my advise. I recommended they use the photo illustrating the term "smoulder" in Wikipedia, a page that I started back in 2006. This photo is superb! and they took my advise.

Like gravity, wind and quakes: Fire science leads to better infrastructure

While high-rise designers make sure that gravity, winds, quakes and fires do not take their ever complex structures to catastrophic collapse, researchers study structural mechanics, aerodynamics, seismology and fire dynamics so that engineering calculations continuously improve and contribute to safer and safer infrastructure. I had the professional pleasure of being involved in this context first hand, and see some of my fire research work be embodied into real buildings [1].

UPDATE (7/2013): Our research on traveling fires has been highlighted in 'Engineering News-Record' in the article titled "9/11 Blazes Debunk Code Assumptions About FireBehavior in Open-Plan Offices" 

High rises in Madrid. Photo by Oscar Villarejo.

Cast in the PhD theses of Dr Jamie Stern-Gottfried ([2], now at Arup Berlin) and Dr Angus Law ([3], now at Arup Leeds), I led the research team that pioneered the thermodynamics concept of travelling fires for structural engineering. This concept has already impacted on the way industry designs modern infrastructure. Funded by Arup, the work has been applied to a building in the City of London in 2012 even before publication of the latest journal papers [1, 4]. More buildings in London, Cardiff and Manchester have followed. This represents one of the fastest knowledge transfer from research to industry seen in the field.

The idea started when we realized that the current structural design for fire protection is not well suited for 21st Century architecture. Traditional methods for specifying the fire load to the structure assume uniform burning and homogeneous temperature conditions throughout a compartment, regardless of its size. This is in contrast to the observation that accidental fires in large, open-plan compartments tend to travel across floor plates, burning over a limited area at any one time and do not burn simultaneously throughout the whole enclosure. These fires have been labelled travelling fires [1, 4]. Despite these observations, traditional structural fire design methods do not account for this type of fire. Traditional methods are only valid for small enclosures, like those typical of older architecture (eg, apartment blocks vs. modern office space or modern airport lounges).

We used travelling fires to produce more realistic fire scenarios in large, open-plan compartments than the conventional methods. This has been published widely [1-6]. The methodology that we developed is purposely simple but based on actual fire physics. It is also posed in a manner that is compatible to the way structural engineers prefer to think about fire loads and design. It considers a family of fires that includes the full range of physically possible fire sizes, from very small to very large. Traditional methods consider only one fire, two at most, and always of the largest size possible. Small fires spread slowly, large fires spread fast, and fires that occupy the whole compartment area do not spread, they simply burn in place. With this framework in mind, we then split the thermal environment into two regions: the near field (the flames) and the far field (smoke away from the flames). Both fields move along the compartment as the fire spreads. See Figure 2.

Fig. 2. (a) Illustration of a travelling fire and (b) Near field and far field exposure durations at an arbitrary point within the fire compartment. From [1].

Small fires travel across a floor plate for long periods of time (slow spread) with relatively cool far field temperatures, while large fires have hotter far field temperatures but burn for shorter durations (faster spread).

Heat transfer calculations show how much the concrete and the steel members heat up due to different fires. As structural members heat up, they lose strength and induce deformations thus posing a collapse hazard to the building. The higher the temperature the larger the hazard. We found that travelling fires lead to the highest temperatures and have a larger impact on the performance of both concrete and steel structures. They are the most onerous fire scenario to the stability of the building. Thus, in the course of this research, we learnt that conventional design approaches cannot be assumed to be conservative. The results indicate that the worst case scenario would be a medium sized travelling fire between 10% and 25% of the floor area. See Figure 3.

Fig. 3. (a) Gas phase and concrete temperatures for rebar depths of 20, 30, 42 and 50 mm and (b) Peak bay temperature vs. fire area and rebar depth. From [1].

The work [1 to 6] represents the foundation for using this concept for structural analysis and design. The results show that the impact of travelling fires is critical for understanding true structural response to fire in modern, open-plan buildings. See Figure 4. We recommend that travelling fires be considered widely for structural design and the structural mechanics. The four recent buildings mentioned above are the very first structures designed purposely to withstand the thermal load of a travelling fire.

Fig. 4. Comparison of concrete temperatures calculated using the travelling fires (base case) and three traditional methods (standard fire curve, and two Eurocode curves).

The work is continued as part of the EPSRC project "Real Fires for the Safe Design of Tall Buildings" [7] led by Prof Torero and which counts with substantial support from industry (AXA, Arup, BRE, BuroHappold, FM Global, SOM). This project aims to produce data on large-scale fire behavior and remove the main barrier to progress in travelling fires; (as noted in [1]) "incorporating travelling fires into design is challenged by the lack of large scale test data".

Note: One of the first journal papers we published on the topic [5] received the 2011 Lloyd’s Science of Risk Prize in Technology. You can read this past article in the blog here.

References:

1. J Stern-Gottfried, G Rein, 2011, Travelling Fires for Structural Design. Part II: Design Methodology, Fire Safety Journal 54, pp. 96–112, 2012.
2. J Stern-Gottfried, 2012, Travelling fires in building design, PhD thesis, University of Edinburgh. 
3. A Law, 2010, The Assessment and Response of Concrete Structures Subject to Fire, PhD thesis, University of Edinburgh.
4. J Stern-Gottfried, G Rein, 2012, Travelling Fires for Structural Design. Part I: Literature Review, Fire Safety Journal 54, pp. 74–85, 2012.
5. A Law, M Gillie, J Stern-Gottfried, G Rein,2011,The Influence of Travelling Fires on a Concrete Frame, Engineering Structures 33, pp. 1635–1642 (open access).  (Winner of 2011 Lloyd's Science of Risk Prize in Technology).
6. G Rein, 2012, Introduction to Fire Dynamics for Structural Engineers, Training School for Young Researchers COST TU0904, Malta.
7. EPSRC-funded project, Real Fires for the Safe Design of Tall Buildings.

Fire Technoloy: Knowing is not enough, We must apply

I am delighted to announce that I have been made Editor-in-Chief of Fire Technology. I take the stead from Jack Watts who expertly led the journal since the 1980s.

Fire Technology is an academic journal publishing scientific research dealing with the full range of fire hazards facing humans and the environment. It publishes original contributions, both theoretical or experimental, that provide and advocate for research and education in fire safety engineering. It is published by Springer in conjunction with the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA).

I see Fire Technology as a small journal in terms of citation impact (~0.43 in 2012) but a very large venue in terms of audience. It is probably the most read journal in the field of fire science, especially by industry. I would like to use FT to push fire science into technology; it is and should continue being The applied journal in the field.

My first step is to renew the Editorial Review Board and choose the best Associate Editors. My editorial line is to expand into emerging fire science topics (wildland fires, WUI, fire and structures, renewable energies, energy storage, etc), make the journal even more exciting, capture the best applied and novel research pieces and reward the reviewers. The immediate objective is to increase its scientific impact (~ impact factor) while maintaining its large industry readership.

Below I reproduce the content of my first editorial as Editor-in-Chief, Jan 2013.

 ----
Editorial: Knowing is Not Enough, We Must Apply
 http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10694-012-0318-1
by Guillermo Rein, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Imperial College, London, UK

Jack Watts has superbly led this journal for several decades, and it is an honour for me to follow his steps and take the stead. My hope is to do nearly as well as he has done. With his help, the support of the Associate Editors, the Editorial Board, Springer staff and especially with the collective efforts of countless reviewers, I look forward a journal that provides and advocates for research and education in fire safety engineering.

Whether science precedes technology or as often observed the inverse order is found, the two of them must communicate and feed to each other if we are to reduce the worldwide burden of fire hazards. This journal wants to bridge the gap. Fire Technology will continue pushing forward the frontiers of knowledge and technology, and help reduce the unworthy obstructions to progress in fire prevention and public safety.

I would like to finish with the wise words of the German writer Goethe (1749– 1832), who said ‘‘Knowing is not enough, we must apply. Willing is not enough, we must do’’.