Experimental study on the combustion behaviors of continuous methanol spill fires on the vertical plane

The development of coal-based fuels is the best way to supplement the petroleum shortage. During the storage and transportation of coal-based fuels, fuel leakage often forms spill fires, posing a serious threat to energy utilization. A series of spill fire experiments were conducted on a vertical plate to improve the understanding of the combustion behavior of spill fires. Methanol was used as the fuel and the leakage rate was 0.32 mL/s∼3.07 mL/s. When the fuel leakage rate is small (≤2.17 mL/s), the fuel burning area gradually shrinks until it reaches a stable value. While the fuel leakage rate is large (≥2.46 mL/s), the flame keeps covering the whole plane below the leakage outlet and the burning area does not shrink. Gravity-dominated diffusion combustion on the vertical plane will result in a thinner fuel thickness, with a calculated average methanol thickness of 0.11 times that of the fuel burning on the horizontal plane. A heat transfer equilibrium model of the steady-state combustion process is further performed, which show that the combustion process of methanol in these cases is dominated by convective heat transfer, accounting for about 90 % of the total heat feedback.