- Author
-
Kohlberg, I.
- Title
- Preliminary Assessment of the Importance of Turbulent Coagulation in the Kuwaiti Oil Fires. Final Report. April 1992-June 1993.
- Coporate
- Institute for Defense Analyses, Alexandria, VA
- Sponsor
- Defense Nuclear Agency, Alexandria, VA
- Report
-
IDA Paper P-2854
June 1993
55 p.
- Distribution
- Available from National Technical Information Service
- Contract
- C-MDA-903-89-C-0003
T-T-U2-1017
- Keywords
-
oil well fires
|
coagulation
|
aerosols
- Identifiers
- Kuwaiti Oil Fires (KOF); particle transport; turbulent inertial coagulation; turbulent shear coagulation
- Abstract
- This study provides a mathematical determination of the spatial distribution of aerosols due to turbulent shear coagulation and turbulent inertial coagulation, as applied to the conditions of the Kuwaiti Oil Fires (KOF) of 1991. Using an approximation from a forest fire for the normalized size distribution of aerosols, the downstream particle concentration is found by the concurrent solution of the coagulations' kinetics combined with turbulent atmospheric diffusion. The results shows the explicit dependence of the concentration on the following principal parameters: turbulent energy dissipationr rate, turbulent diffusion constant, average wind speed, mass ejection from a well, Kolmorogov time scale for turbulence, and Kolmorogov length scale for turbulence. For very large values of turbulent energy dissipation rate, turbulent inertial coagulation is more effective than turbulent shear coagulation in particle growth. The spatial dependence of concentraion attributed to turbulent coagulation may vary considerably. Depending on the choice of parameters, the importance of turbulent coagulation in particle transport processes may extend from less than a kilometer to tens of kilometers.