Forest Fire Smoldering Emissions from Ponderosa Pine Duff in Central Washington
Abstract
Forest fire smoldering combustion is a significant contribution to pollution and carbon emissions. Smoldering combustion produces the majority of carbon monoxide (CO), methane (CH4), volatile organic compounds (VOC), and fine particulate matter (PM2.5) emitted by forest fires when it occurs. The emission factor for PM2.5 and many VOCs are correlated with the modified combustion efficiency (MCE), which is the ratio of CO2 emitted, to the sum of emitted CO2 and CO. MCE is a measure of the relative ratio of flaming and smoldering combustion, but its relationship to the physical fire process is poorly studied. We measured carbon emission rates and individual emission factors for CO, CO2, CH4, and VOC's from smoldering combustion on Ponderosa pine /Douglas-Fir forest sites in central Washington. The emission factor results are linked with concurrent thermal measurements made at various depths in the duff and surface IR camera imagery. The MCE value ranged from .80 to .91 and are correlated with emission factors for 24 carbon compounds. Other data collected were fuel moistures and duff temperatures at depth increments. This goal of this research is the creation of a database to better predict the impacts of air pollution resulting from burns leading to smoldering combustion.
- Publication:
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AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2017
- Bibcode:
- 2017AGUFMNH41C0165B
- Keywords:
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- 3390 Wildland fire model;
- ATMOSPHERIC PROCESSES;
- 4321 Climate impact;
- NATURAL HAZARDS;
- 4323 Human impact;
- NATURAL HAZARDS;
- 4333 Disaster risk analysis and assessment;
- NATURAL HAZARDS