Assessment and Calculations of Plume Rise for Forest Fires during Texas Air Quality

Study period.

Uarporn Nopmongcol

Dept. of Chemical Engineering

The University of Texas

Austin, Texas

adfd

Fires consumed vegetation on 1.6 and 1.7 million acres of lands in 1996 and 1997, respectively

Contribute PM, CO, and ozone precursors to atmosphere

Emission Inventory for Texas Air Quality Study (TexAQS) : August 1st- September 30th in 200

Wild fires

Why do we care plume rise??

Vertical displacement before dispersion process

not stack area sources

evaluate 1 out of 6 models and integrate results into CAMx

CAMx

Eulerian photochemical dispersion model that allows for integrated assessment of gaseous and particulate air pollution

Goals

Incorporate grid information to fire locations using ArcGIS

Extracting meteorological data from CAMx & MM5

Visual Basic Programming of Fire plume calculation 

Fire Plume Model

Brown, 1999 , U. of Illinois

Atmospheric dispersion and air quality impacts from fires/smoke sources

Plume rise (Final Rise) - Brigg’s two-thirds law

Equations : Fire Plume Model

Stable Condition

Neutral Condition

Unstable Condition

Methodology : Input needed

Input Fireplume Model CALPUFF Model Meteorological data Temperature

Layer 1-2 in CAMx stucture

Layer 1-14 in CAMx stucture

Horizontal Wind Layer 3 in CAMx stucture

Layer 1-14 in CAMx stucture

Pressure Layer 1-14 in CAMx stucture

Mixing Height Heat Flux at Surface Plume Characteristics Temperature of release Exit vertical velocity Heat Release Acres Burned

Input Fireplume Model CALPUFF Model Meteorological data Temperature

Layer 1-2 in CAMx stucture

Layer 1-14 in CAMx stucture

Horizontal Wind Layer 3 in CAMx stucture

Layer 1-14 in CAMx stucture

Pressure Layer 1-14 in CAMx stucture

Mixing Height Heat Flux at Surface Plume Characteristics Temperature of release Exit vertical velocity Heat Release Acres Burned

Emission Inventory

Fire Characteristics

Plume temperature : 900-1600 K Heat release & Acres burned : Emission Inventory during

Texaqs period by CEER

Fire ID Fire Date/Start Date LatDD LongDD Total Acres

Burned Heat_Release

(Btu)/day 1085 31-Aug-00 30.5210 -93.0480 4000 2.15E+11 1033 30-Aug-00 30.2590 -95.0060 1000 8.42E+10 1094 01-Sep-00 30.9019 -93.5894 793.2 6.68E+10

Sample of fire events modeling episode between Aug 22nd- Sep 1st HG-BPA domain large fire > 500 acres

Build gridExcel Ascii

Add heading

ASCII

Grid

•spatial analysis

•convert

•raster to feature

Define projection

WOO HOO !!

Sample of fire eventsUsing Arc GIS to assemble the data

Fire ID Fire Date/Start

Date LatDD LongDD Total Acres

Burned Heat_Release

(Btu)/day X1 Y1 X2 Y2

1033 30-Aug-00 30.2590 -95.0060 1000 8.42E+10 31 45 66 77

1085 31-Aug-00 30.5210 -93.0480 4000 2.15E+11 77 56 112 88

1094 01-Sep-00 30.9019 -93.5894 793.2 6.68E+10 64 65 99 97

Methodology : Input Obtaining

Meteorological Data

CAMx binary input files - U, T

- Fortran Coding

MM5 binary output files : - Heat flux at surface, mixing height - Fortran Coding

- VB v.6 Coding , Greenwich to std time

Programming

All Input data is in Microsoft Access

VB v. 6 programming

Results: Both burning period and Temperature do not effect plume rise

Results and DiscussionFireplume calculations

Aug 30, Fire ID 1033 , 1000 acres

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Fireplume calculations Sep 1, Fire ID 1094 , 800 acres

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Conclusion & Future work

Conclusion : suggest low plume rise at night time and high peak during late afternoon.

Further study on different models is necessary

Acknowledgements

Dr. David Maidment Dr. Richard Corsi Dr. Dave T. Allen , CEER Dr. Yosuke Kimura, CEER CEER crews : Anil, Victoria, Matt

Questions?

Be my guest!