A technology for determining peak concentration of flammable mixture using a tubular flame burner-A study on the method for determiningflammability limits of flammable mixture

In order to evaluate the efficiency of the fire suppressant as Halon replacements, we examine traditional method of determining peak concentration using explosion vessel apparatus in respect of the theory and application, and point out these facts as follows: (1) the limits measured by traditional method are ignition limits but no extinction limits, when seeing from the combustion theory; (2) the results obtained by explosion vessel apparatus are greatly influenced by a lot of apparatus factors and artificial judgments, and traditional method is inconvenient in measuring flammability limits because it is troublesome to operate.As taking the place of the traditional method, we applied a tubular flame burner to determine flammability limits of combustible mixtures, and examined the influence on the measured result by the apparatus factors. From the results, we conclude as follows: (1) the limit obtained by this new test method is a distinctly extinction limit, it can be applied to evaluate fire suppressant efficiency; (2) the measured flammability limits are hardly influenced by apparatus factor; (3) this method is superior to explosion vessel method in measuring the flammability limits and the peak concentrations, because it is simple to operate and quick to test.