Johannes Rex, PhD student at the Division of Ergonomics and Aerosol Technology, LTH, will give a presentation on his work about “Aerosol Emissions from Fires in Novel and Conventional Materials”.

Firefighters risk exposure to combustion emissions from many different sources. Tailpipe emissions and wildfire emissions are both subject for much current research, however, fire emissions from the built environment and how it may change during the green transition are considerably less studied. During this transitioning to a more sustainable society, new building materials are being used with poorly characterized emissions and unknown health effects. There is also a trend of increased use of conventional materials such as wood-based building materials, that are often treated with fire retardants that can severely alter the fire emissions. In several experiments, we aim to characterize fire emissions from novel and conventional building materials, in small-scale, highly controlled experiments, as well as large scale tests, and to further investigate the relationship between combustion conditions, fuel, and emission characteristics. The small-scale tests were conducted in a (controlled atmosphere) cone calorimeter at fire safety engineering’s fire lab, and a battery of online and offline gas and particle measurement were performed on the emissions. Main results include that ammonium phosphate-based fire retardants reduce soot emissions but instead introduced a large amount of phosphate-containing ultrafine particles (UFPs). A clear effect of ventilation degree on PAH emissions is also identified in both small-scale and large-scale experiments.

Fika will be served from 11.00, and the seminar starts at 11.15.

Welcome to join!