Citation

Wang Z, Jia F, Galea ER. J. Fire Prot. Eng. 2012; 22(3): 227-240.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2012, SAGE Publishing)

DOI

10.1177/1042391512450108

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

A generalized relationship between the normalized yields of carbon monoxide and hydrogen cyanide for nitrogen-containing materials has recently been derived. This correlation is used in the current study to analyze experimentally derived hydrogen cyanide data from three sets of fire tests. For a reduced-scale compartment fire test, the yields of hydrogen cyanide with varied equivalence ratios and the transient hydrogen cyanide concentrations are estimated; for a series of room-corridor sofa fire tests, the extremely high hydrogen cyanide level observed is demonstrated to be a realistic result and a hydrogen cyanide yield value of 0.047 g/g is suggested for this sofa in post-flashover fires for fire safety assessments; and finally, for a series of smoke chamber tests with polyurethane, possible causes for the failure to detect hydrogen cyanide are suggested.

Language: en