Preliminary Assessment of the Importance of Turbulent Coagulation in the Kuwaiti Oil Fires
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 result shows the explicit dependence of the concentration on the following principal parameters: turbulent energy dissipation 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 concentration 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. Kuwaiti Oil Fires (KOF), Particle transport, Turbulent inertial coagulation, Turbulent shear coagulation.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Jun 01, 1993
- Accession Number
- ADA278525
Entities
People
- Ira Kohlberg
Organizations
- Institute for Defense Analyses