Exploring VOC Emissions from Structure and Prescribed Fires

CLARA MCMULLIN, Sungwoo Kim, Abigail Maben, Shantanu Jathar, Gabriel Isaacman-VanWertz, Virginia Tech

     Abstract Number: 423
     Working Group: Combustion

Abstract
The number and intensity of wildfires is increasing, and fires are increasingly encroaching on populated areas. While in recent years there has been more of a focus on understanding emissions from these fires, there is still a large gap in knowledge about burning structures and other built materials. These fuels contain a large amount of potentially hazardous chemicals not found in natural systems, raising concerns about the resulting emissions. In this project, samples were collected onto sorbent packed cartridges by flying drones over prescribed and wild structure fires. After collection, the samples were analyzed through thermal desorption – gas chromatography and mass spectrometry (TD-GC/MS) calibrated using hydrocarbon standards. Data were analyzed comprehensively using recently-developed automated workflows and approaches to catalog and quantify all analytes found in a set of samples. Analytes were identified using existing mass spectral libraries and machine learning classification approaches. These methods enable a comprehensive and semi-quantitative evaluation of the composition of the gases emitted. This presentation will focus on the composition of emissions and how they vary by fuel and conditions.