Fire Safety Science Digital Archive

Experiments are described on the detection of the smoke emitted from fires in mixtures of alcohol and benzene. A room of volume 153 m^3 (5400 ft^3) was used, of height 2.46 m (8 ft 1 in), with the fires at distances of up to 6.10 m (20 ft) from the detection and measuring equipment. The rate of smoke emission was varied by changing the percentage of benzene in the mixtures, and measurements were made of the detection times of two proprietary smoke detectors, the optical density of the smoke and the rise in air temperature at ceiling level.