Experimental study and theoretical analysis on influencing factors of burning rate of methanol pool fire

A series of experiments were conducted to study the variation law of burning rate of methanol pool fire under natural ventilation and mechanical ventilation. Several factors are considered: size of pan, initial temperature of pan, air flow speed and so on. Also the heat transfer mechanisms of methanol pool fire are analyzed in-depth. The results show that: under natural ventilation, heat transfer from pan to pool by convection plays a significant role on the increase of burning rate. The higher the hydraulic diameter is, the lower the burning rate is. The higher the initial temperature is, the higher the burning rate is under initial development stage and steady burning stage. Under mechanical ventilation, the burning rate of methanol pool decreases followed by increase with the increase of longitudinal air flow speed. The air flow speed at inflection point of burning rate increases gradually with the increase of the characteristic length of pan. The Richardson number for different pans at the infection point of burning rate should be constant, the critical value is about 1 in this research.