AAAR 33rd Annual Conference
October 20 - October 24, 2014
Rosen Shingle Creek
Orlando, Florida, USA
Abstract View
Aerosol Measurements in Solid Rocket Propellant Fire Plumes
FRED GELBARD, Daniel Lucero, Brandon Servantes, Andrew Lennon, Karen Siegrist, Mike Thomas, Adam Willitsford, Sandia National Laboratories
Abstract Number: 12 Working Group: Combustion
Abstract Much aerosol is generated by a burning solid rocket propellant that is released into the atmosphere. Under accident conditions in which the rocket fails, the burning propellant may land on top of hazardous materials. The heat from the burning propellant may then vaporize the hazardous material which can subsequently homogenously nucleate and/or condense on the propellant aerosol. Because aerosol particle size greatly influences risk assessment of the hazardous material, data on the size distribution of the resulting aerosol are essential.
In this work we report aerosol data for large blocks of burning solid rocket propellant. Measurements of aerosol generated by the burning propellant suspended 2.5 to 3.8 cm. above concrete and coated steel are presented. By combining cascade impactor particle collection and scanning electron micrographs we find that the data are explained by aluminum from the propellant burning to produce mostly 50 nm diameter alumina primary particles, with a smaller mass fraction of the aerosol consisting of micrometer size particles. The 50 nm diameter alumina particles provide most of the surface area for vapor condensation, and these particles agglomerate rapidly to form particles 0.4 – 1.2 µm in aerodynamic diameter within 2.5 meters from the bottom surface.
*Sandia is a multiprogram laboratory operated by Sandia Corporation, a Lockheed Martin Company, for the United States Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration under Contract DE-AC-94-AL85000.