Fire Safety Journal 33 (1999) 185}212 Simulation of water mist suppression of small scale methanol liquid pool "res Kuldeep Prasad*, Chiping Li, K. Kailasanath Laboratory for Computational Physics and Fluid Dynamics, Naval Research Laboratory, Code 6410, 4555 Overlook Avenue, Washington DC 20375, USA Science Application International Coorporation, McLean, VA, USA Received 29 January 1999; received in revised form 12 May 1999; accepted 4 June 1999 Abstract The focus of this paper is on numerical modeling of methanol liquid pool "res and the suppression of these "res using water mist. A mathematical model is "rst developed to describe the evaporation and burning of liquid methanol. The complete set of unsteady, compressible Navier}Stokes equations are solved along with an Eulerian sectional water mist model. Heat transfer into the liquid pool and the metal container through conduction, convection and radiation are modeled by solving a modi"ed form of the energy equation. Clausius}Clapeyron relationships are invoked to model the evaporation rate of a two-dimensional pool of pure liquid methanol. The interaction of water mist with pulsating "res stabilized above a liquid methanol pool and steady "res stabilized by a strong co-#owing air jet are simulated. Time-dependent heat release/absorption pro"les indicate the location where the water droplets evaporate and absorb energy. The relative contribution of the various suppression mechanisms such as oxygen dilution, radiation and thermal cooling is investigated. Parametric studies are performed to determine the e!ect of mist density, injection velocity and droplet diameter on entrainment and suppression of pool "res. These results are reported in terms of reduction in peak temperature, e!ect on burning rate and changes in overall heat release rate. Numerical simulations indicate that small droplet diameters exhibit smaller characteristic time for decrease of relative velocity with respect to the gas phase, and therefore entrain more rapidly into the di!usion #ame than larger droplet. Hence for the co-#ow injection case, smaller diameter droplets produce max- imum #ame suppression for a "xed amount of water mist.  1999 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. * Corresponding author. Tel: 001-202-404-6222; fax: 001-202-767-4798. E-mail address: prasad@lcp.nrl.navy.mil (K. Prasad) 0379-7112/99/$ - see front matter  1999 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. PII: S 0 3 7 9 - 7 1 1 2 ( 9 9 ) 0 0 0 2 8 - 4