Abstract
Kerosene heaters have been improved and are equipped with safety devices, such as a safety shutoff device. However, fires caused by misfueling with gasoline still occur frequently. In previous works, it was reported that the major causes of the fires were fuel overflow, resulting from the expansion of the gaseous phase in a fuel tank caused by the high vapor pressure of gasoline. The amount of overflowing gasoline was calculated from the vapor pressure of the fuel and the initial volume of the gaseous phase in the fuel tank. In this work, we directly measured the expanding volume using an experimental device simulating kerosene heaters without measuring the vapor pressure of the fuel. Then, we measured the expanding volume using a real cartridge fuel tank type kerosene heater, and compared the results of the simulating device and the real kerosene heater.
The expanding behavior obtained from the simulating device was the same as the result of the real kerosene heater. The result shows we can predict the temperature where the fuel will start to overflow from the initial volume of the gaseous phase in the fuel tank using the kerosene heater simulator. Furthermore, it is clarified that in the case of misfueling the possibility of fuel overflow remarkably increases at more than 30 degrees.
