PhD in Robust Upscaling of Smouldering Processes at University of Strathclyde

A PhD studentship is available in Robust Upscaling of Smouldering Processes, with a specific focus on linking results from in situ smouldering remediation (Self-sustaining Treatment for Active Remediation or STAR) experiments in the laboratory (0.003 m^3) to field scale (3 m^3 to 300 m^3 and larger) activities. We are most interested in engineers, physicists, chemists and applied mathematicians with experience or at least a strong interest in combustion and fire sciences. This studentship is offered in partnership between the University of Strathclyde, the University of Edinburgh and the company SiREM.

Supervisor: Dr. Christine Switzer

Co-supervisors: Prof. Jose Torero, Dr. Guillermo Rein and Dr. Gavin Grant


The development of in situ smouldering combustion as a remediation technology (STAR) has emphasized small scale experimentation as a vehicle to understand the different processes involved and to optimize the relevant variables such as ignition protocol and flow rates. These tests have served as the basis under which larger scale tests have been conducted. Larger scale tests have been performed with overall success but with different levels of trial and error that has proven not only costly but having some negative effect in the overall performance. The optimized utilization of STAR in real sites needs to have a clear protocol that will help define the conditions that will best allow scaling-up of laboratory data.

Preliminary assessment of the viability of a site will always be done on the basis of small scale experiments. Definition of the details of the large scale implementation requires the inevitable scaling-up of the information obtained. This can be done via modelling but this requires a detailed understanding of the different phenomena involved. This understanding is currently not complete. An excellent source of information that can allow better understanding of the parameters differentiating small from large scale experiments is the thorough a posteriori assessment of the different large scale tests that have been conducted. While some assessment has been done, it has been mostly qualitative and it has never been directly correlated to small scale behaviour.

The proposal for this studentship is based on the need to develop the scale-up understanding from existing (and future) large scale experiments. The analysis of temperature/emissions/igniter/flow data together with the structure of excavation data will allow better understanding of the large scale tests. This information can be fed into existing (analytic and numerical) models to develop up-scaling tools. Furthermore, this information has to be linked to the wide database of small scale experimental data to try to establish an ideal protocol to use bench scale experimentation for the purpose of assessing site viability.

There is one studentship associated with this advertisement and this student will be based at the University of Strathclyde, UK. The studentship is open to individuals within the EEA only and provides a stipend of £13,590 per year. For further information, please contact Dr. Christine Switzer [mailto:christine.switzer@strath.ac.uk]

PhD funding on subsurface fires. Earth and Natural Sciences

A PhD studentship to study peat fires between University College Dublin and University of Edinburgh is available to a student of any nationality. We are most interested in engineers, physicists and chemists with a background on thermal sciences, some experience in laboratory work and an interest on Earth sciences. See below a brief description. For information and application, see PhD Programme in Earth and Natural Sciences at UCS.

Project BIO 3: Characterising the dynamics and environmental impact of subsurface
peat fires by controlled experiments

Principal Investigator: Dr Jon Yearsley (UCD) – jon.yearsley@ucd.ie
Collaborators: Claire Belcher (University of Edinburg); Guillermo Rein (University of Edinburg)

Fire is an increasing global threat to the carbon store and ecosystem services provided by peatlands (they contain 1/3 of terrestrial carbon). Peatland wildfires are extreme events that are becoming more frequent both in Ireland and internationally. Smouldering peat produces 5‐40% of annual global carbon emissions, but these are presently not accounted for by the IPCC7. They threaten the environment (e.g. habitat destruction and greenhouse gas emissions) and human health (e.g. air quality), but our understanding of these smouldering fires is poor compared to flaming fires. The core of the project will study sub‐surface peatland fire behaviour by performing experimental peat burns for a range environmental conditions. The student will develop the experimental protocol at the Centre for Fire Safety Engineering (University of Edinburgh) and then installed at UCD for the majority of the experimental manipulations. This project combines fire dynamics and Earth systems research and builds upon an existing collaboration between UCD and University of Edinburgh. The work has relevance to climate change mitigation/adaptation, managing peatland carbon stores against the risk of sub‐surface fires and the fundamental science of smouldering fire. We are looking for an outstanding student with interest in undertaking experimental research on the interface between fire dynamics, Earth systems and ecological modelling.
There is one PhD Studentship associated with this Project and will be based at UCD

Combustion technology for the remediation of soil contaminants

The next IIE Seminar is on Thursday April 21 at 1 pm, AGB seminar room 3rd floor. Pizza will be served at 12.45pm.

"Self-Sustaining Smouldering Combustion for the Remediation of Organic Industrial Liquids in Soil"

by

Jason I. Gerhard (jgerhard@uwo.ca)
University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario, Canada

Abstract
Self-sustaining smoldering combustion is an innovative approach for clean-up of sites contaminated with liquid waste from industrial processes. This approach offers significant potential for the destruction of highly recalcitrant compounds, such as coal tar and petroleum hydrocarbons, for which clean-up options are currently limited and very costly.

Smoldering is the flameless combustion of a liquid or solid fuel that derives heat from surface oxidation reactions; smoldering of charcoal in a barbeque is a typical example. This research, pioneered at University of Edinburgh, was the first to demonstrate that liquid tar in soil may be effectively destroyed via smoldering. Further research has revealed that the process has the unique properties of being self-sustaining, self-targeting, and self-terminating, all of which may make it uniquely cost efficient and technically effective.

This presentation will illustrate the scientific principles behind this remediation concept, and summarize the six years of research that has been conducted to date. The results of experiments from proof-of-concept to the first in situ field pilot study will be presented. This research represents an ongoing collaboration between University of Edinburgh, University of Strathclyde, and University of Western Ontario. The technology has been licensed to SiREM, who is developing the technology under the name Self-Sustaining Treatment for Active Remediation (STAR).


Short Bio
Dr. Jason Gerhard has over 15 years of experience leading experiments and modelling for investigating organic industrial contaminants in the subsurface and their remediation. He graduated with an honours B.Sc. (Eng.) in Geological Engineering in 1993 and an M.Sc. (1995) and Ph.D. (2002) in Civil and Environmental Engineering from Queen’s University (Kingston, Ontario, Canada). From 2002, he was a Lecturer in Environmental Engineering at University of Edinburgh. Since 2007, Dr. Gerhard holds the Canada Research Chair in Geoenvironmental Restoration at The University of Western Ontario (London, Canada) in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. At Western, Dr. Gerhard is co-director of the RESTORE Group (Research for Subsurface Transport and Remediation) with more than 20 graduate students and postdoctoral fellows, 4 laboratories, and 3 field research programs.

Seminars on Flame generated species, and on Amazonian Wildland fires

The Fire Group is hosting 2 seminars next week - see details below

ALL WELCOME

--
Tuesday 8 March, at 1pm
Sanderson Classroom 3
Pizza at 12.45 in Sanderson Foyer

Speaker: Dr Johannes Kiefer, Lecturer in Chemical Engineering, University of Aberdeen

Innovative approaches for the detection of flame generated species

The detection of combustion generated species is an important task from many viewpoints. Firstly, it is essential in the field of combustion research where a major aim is to obtain information about the distribution of the fuel and oxidiser, the products, as well as transient intermediates with high spatial and temporal resolution. This allows the complex phenomena of combustion chemistry, turbulence, heat and mass transfer, and their interactions with each other to be studied. Secondly, combustion species detection is important for environmental and safety reasons, in particular in view of toxic and corrosive products that can cause severe problems when human beings or structures are exposed to them. The presentation will give an overview of recent developments in the field of optical combustion diagnostics using innovative light sources. This includes the use of novel ultraviolet light emitting diodes (LEDs) for the quantitative detection of sulphur dioxide at trace level, and the use of alexandrite lasers, which are actually well known for applications in cosmetic surgery, for imaging of flame radicals.

-
Friday 11 March, at 1pm
AGB Seminar Room

Speaker: Dr Saulo Freitas, INPE Brazil, Centro de Previsão de Tempo e Estudos Climáticos

Wildland fires in Amazonia as seen from the atmosphere

Biomass burning in Amazonia recurrently releases large amounts of trace gases and aerosol particles to the atmosphere. The consequent change from low to very high atmospheric concentrations of oxidants and aerosols therefore affects the radiative, cloud microphysical and chemical properties of the atmosphere over Amazonia. This seminar aims to summarize current studies and numerical regional modeling at INPE of the biomass burning process and its impacts on weather, climate, and air quality. We will also describe the model developments associated with the estimation of biomass burning emissions, the plume rise mechanism and the fully coupled atmospheric chemistry transport model developed to study and forecast smoke aerosol and trace gas concentrations, weather and air quality.

2009 New Impact Factors for fire related journals

The Journal Citation Reports has released the impact factors for 2009.

The impact factor, one of the measures available to rank journals, is the frequency with which the "average article" in a journal has been cited in the previous two years. It is calculated dividing the number of citations to papers published in the previous two years by the total number of items published during the same period. In order and for fire related journals, these are:

- Progress in Energy and Combustion Science 12.440
- Journal of Hazardous Materials 4.144
- Proceedings of the Combustion Institute 3.510
- Combustion and Flame 2.923
- International Journal of Wildland Fire 1.901
- Building and Environment 1.797
- Fire Safety Journal 1.259
- Engineering Structures 1.256
- Experimental Thermal and Fluid Science 1.234
- Fire and Materials 1.196
- Combustion Science and Technology 1.142
- Journal of Structural Engineering 0.928
- Journal of Fire Science 0.860
- Fire Technology 0.366
- Journal of Fire Protection Engineering 0.296

Clarification (derived from the wikipedia):
The 2009 impact factor of a given journal is equal to A/B. Where A is the number of times articles published in 2007 and 2008 were cited during 2009, and B is the total number of papers published by that journal in 2007 and 2008.

Research and the release rate of FDS versions

I have recently posted in the Discussion Group site for FDS and Smokeview some questions related to the release rate of FDS versions that I would like to post here as well.

Note: Fire Dynamics Simulator (FDS) is a computational fluid dynamics model of fire-driven fluid flow developed by NIST.


First, note that I am not a code developer but an user. I am a particular type of user: a researcher. An academic who studies methodologies to use some of the tools available to fire safety engineers. Hopefully I have helped or will help to develop the state of the art in fire modelling. I certainly support improvements to FDS and greatly admire the work of the FDS developers team.

For the last two years I am facing two problems stemming from the different versions of FDS that are released with some frequency. Research (my research at least) has a characteristic time that seems to be significantly longer that the time between version releases. This means that when we start a research project on modelling that includes FDS we use the newest version available but by the time the work is finishing and concluding, there are one or two new versions of FDS available. Note: PhD thesis in the UK last for three or four years.


This has led to these issues in my research group:

I - Different results from different versions
We have accidentally observed two times already (in two different PhD thesis work) that the same input file produces significantly different results in different but consecutive versions of FDS (eg v5.2.0, v5.2.5 and v5.3.0). In one case it took us months to figure out the problem. Both of these problems were discussed in due time in the FDS forum. My personal recommendation to my students is that they fix the FDS version of their interest at the beginning of the project and stay with it until the very end of the thesis.

I wonder if other researchers would like to express their views on this issue?

II - Peer reviewed of FDS results
We have had reviewers complaining and requesting rejection of our modelling papers because results are not in the latest version of FDS. NOTE: just the review process in fire and combustion typically takes anything from 3 to 16 months.

About modelling work on the Dalmarnock Fire Tests (Chp 2 of this thesis), one anonymous reviewer recently said "Given that [version] 5 has significant changes in the combustion model and other submodels, there is no value to the community in publishing a paper on FDS 4 unless the paper can demonstrate that the conclusions on FDS performance will remain valid for the current version and versions under active development".

To demonstrate that the conclusions of the work apply to the newest version of FDS effectively implies repeating the thesis work. This is not affordable in most cases, at least not for my group. Should academics fear every new version of FDS because it means one extra year of work for PhD students?

I wonder if other researchers would like to express their views on this issue?

III - Corollary
Following from issues I and II, I am confronted with the question, what happens with buildings which design was aided and approved using previous versions of FDS. What are the implications to forensic investigations that reached conclusions in court using a previous version of FDS?

Combustion Institute British Spring Meeting 2010 - Combustion Phenomena in Fire Science

One-Day Meeting on Combustion Phenomena in Fire Science

Combustion Institute British Section: Spring Meeting 2010

Minutes by Stephen Welch, July 2010

BRE Centre for Fire Safety Engineering, The University of Edinburgh

* http://www.eng.ed.ac.uk/fire/combustion2010

Seven invited speakers from home and abroad represented research interests spanning experimental studies and modelling of fire phenomena.  The meeting opened with a good context setting talk on “Enclosure fires modelling: where are we and where are we going?”, by Prof Bart Merci of Ghent University.  The capabilities of models are progressively advancing but equally if not more important is the knowledge of the user.  Options to increase knowledge of FSE were discussed and the value of Masters programmes in Fire Safety Engineering emphasised. The complexity of fire phenomena and the strong dependence of fire development on details of the input must be recognised. The need for systematic validation exercises working up from simple cases, and recognising measurement uncertainties, remains vital.  Discussion focussed on the problem of models validated for benchscale scenarios being misused in other large-scale applications.

The current limits of our knowledge became rapidly apparent in the next talk on the Buncefield incident by Dougal Drysdale, emeritus professor at Edinburgh University.  Lavishly illustrated by impressive images of tank fires and explosion aftermath, Dougal highlighted a number of thought-provoking aspects of the incident: the possibility that the vapour had been ignited by the pumps turned on to disperse it, with initially puzzling damage features elucidated as pertaining to the reverse flow in the rarefaction wave, all pointing at the pumphouse, and the environmental impact of the use of remaining stocks of old foam concentrate, which had been banned from further use.  The severity and exact nature of the explosion has still not been satisfactorily resolved via modelling studies that were completed with Cartesian hedgerows. Despite opinions expressed at the time that this incident was unique and could never happen again Dougal noted that there have recently been two more of a similar nature.  Hedgerows may indeed have had a role in providing turbulence generation mechanisms and perhaps we need to consider their removal!

Dove-tailing nicely with Dougal’s conclusions, Dr Savio Vianna of Cambridge University picked up the theme of dealing with complex geometries in accidental explosion modelling.  Peak pressures have been well predicted in a range of applications using a Modified Porosity Distributed Resistance (MPDR) model for approximating the flow effects due to complex obstructions (thus potentially of value for Dougal’s hedgerows?!).  Work is ongoing on addressing further aspects of the combustion modelling and the impact of suppression phenomena via deluge and micromist systems.

With another slick progression Prof Kai Luo of Southampton University then took us deeper into the challenges of modelling fire suppression.  Liquid phase effects tend to invalidate most of our existing modelling tools for diffusion flames and attempting to include them we are immediately confronted by severe computational challenges.  Nevertheless, by adopting an Eulerian-Lagrangian Approach with an LES/DNS framework valuable insights into mechanisms have now been achieved – highlighting the need to supply sufficiently small drops which are able to effectively reach the reaction zones and the fact that the cooling effects are dominant over dilution and direct kinetic impacts.  Thus fine mists with large evaporation enthalpies will tend to be most effective but optimum droplet size is dependent on the nature of the fire flows.

Having exhausted the topic of suppression we returned to fluid dynamics and the particular problems of entrainment of air into thermal spill plumes, studied in great detail by Dr Roger Harrison in his work at the University of Canterbury.  These are very relevant practical problems for design of large public spaces but hitherto the spill plume formulae have been constrained by insufficient empirical knowledge, and the application of advanced numerical models, i.e. CFD, limited by other uncertainties.  It was found that spill plume behaviour and entrainment are dependent on the characteristics of the layer flow below the spill edge.  Roger’s work has also resulted in a range of new and improved simplified design formulae for a variety of spill plume scenarios and new guidance on the use of CFD models for these applications.

Coming back to fundamental fire phenomena, Prof John Griffiths of Leeds University addressed the topic of lagging fires, a common problem in industrial environments when potentially flammable fluids leak from pipe work into the surrounding insulation material. Such fires may have devasting consequences, and are neglected at our peril!  The participating phenomena are highly complex, but John’s experimental, numerical and theoretical investigations have revealed the role of different processes related to the nature of the combustion (gas or liquid phase) and the dependence on the fluid properties in interaction with the heating environment, i.e. the energetic effects of vaporisation and the possibility of fluid and vapour movement and recondensation within the porous media. Thus fuel volatility, overlooked in previous studies with mainly involatile liquids, is a key parameter.

The day concluded with a wide-ranging talk on Forest Fire Research by Prof Domingos Viegas of the University of Coimbra.  We were informed of the fundamental experimental research on fire spread dependencies which have clarified basic sensitivities to effects of wind and slope.  At full-scale level the role of convection is vital.  The mechanisms involved in spot fires have been individually examined and fire tornados have been studied in the lab and at full-scale.  The concept of eruptive fire behaviour was described, and the extreme dangers arising from sudden transitions in fire development illustrated by a number of sobering case studies.  The talk concluded with lessons learned from the Australian fires in Victoria in 2009, which claimed 173 lives and destroyed 4000 km² within 10 hours. 

All of the talks (downloadable*) raised our awareness of the potentially serious consequences of fire in various arenas and the challenge to the fire community in furthering our understanding and knowledge of the fundamental underpinning fire phenomena.  We add to this our responsibility to educate and inform and clearly we have our work cut out and much to do.  In concluding the meeting the awards committee recognised some of the outstanding work already being done in these areas in conferring the best poster awards to  Dr A Snegirev of Saint-Petersburg State Polytechnic University, for his work on modelling spray fires, and to Jamie Stern-Gottfried et al. of Edinburgh University/Arup, for his studies of non-homogeneous fire environments.

Minutes by Stephen Welch, July 2010

BRE Centre for Fire Safety Engineering, The University of Edinburgh

* http://www.eng.ed.ac.uk/fire/combustion2010

PROGRAMME of Invited Speakers:

	Time	Speaker	From	Topic
	10.15	Registration, coffee/tea and poster setup
	10.55	Welcome
	11.00	Prof Bart Merci	Ghent University	Enclosure fires modelling
	11.40	Prof Dougal Drysdale	University of Edinburgh	2005 Buncefield oil depot explosions
	12.20	Dr Savio Vianna	University of Cambridge	Accidental explosions modelling
	13.00	Lunch and Poster Session
	14.10	Prof Kai Luo	University of Southampton	Fire suppression modelling
	14.50	Dr Roger Harrison	University of Canterbury	Fire plume experiments
	15.30	Coffee/tea and Poster Session
	16.10	Prof John Griffiths	University of Leeds	Lagging fires: Experimental, numerical and theoretical investigations.
	16.50	Prof Domingos Viegas	University of Coimbra	Forest fires research
	17.30	Best Poster Awards
	17.35	Close

Meeting Co-sponsored by IOP Combustion Physics Group

One-day Conference: Emerging Technologies in Combustion, 29 Sept

Emerging Technologies in Combustion
29 September 2010
Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh


[website]

The Autumn meeting of IOP Combustion Physics Group will take place at Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh, on 29 September 2010. This one-day meeting will cover current and emerging technologies in Combustion in industry and academia. The topics will include, Clean Combustion; Coal Combustion; Carbon Capture and Storage and biochar; Underground Coal Gasification; Methane Hydrate; and Soil contaminant remediation.

Organised by the IOP Combustion Physics Group
(co-sponsored by the Combustion Institute British Section)

More information here.

Programme:

09:15	Registration and Coffee
09:45	Welcome to HWU, Edinburgh, Prof. James Ritchie
Morning Section Section Chair: Professor David Fowler, NERC, Edinburgh
10:00	Clean Combustion: The Challenge!Prof Doug Greenhalgh, Heriot-Watt University
10:30	Topic: To be decided Mr. Richard Dennis, Doosan Babcock
11:00	Carbon Capture and Storage: current status and implications for combustion technologies Prof. Jon Gibbins, University Edinburgh
11:30	Tea
11:45	Methane Hydrate: The Burning SnowballProf. Bahman Tohidi (Heriot-Watt University)
12:15	Discussion, Chair: Prof. David Fowler
12:30	Lunch
Afternoon section Session Chair: Dr. Guillermo Rein (University of Edinburgh)
13:40	Underground Coal GasificationDr Richard Marsh, Cardiff University
14:10	Biochar as a Climate Change Mitigation Technology and Adaptation measure - promises and challenges of its deploymentDr. Ondrej Masek, University of Edinburgh
14:40	Combustion Technology for the Remediation of Industrial Soil Pollution: Environmental Benefits from Combustion ScienceDr Christine Switzer, University of Strathclyde
15:10	The combustion of fossil fuels in novel power cycles capable of capturing CO2 suitable for sequestrationDr. John Dennis, University of Cambridge
15:40	Discussion section Chair: Dr. Guillermo Rein, University of Edinburgh
16:10	Tea, Close