As part of the process of obtaining preapproval for the use of in situ burning in the event of an oil spill, numerical models have been used to predict the concentration of particulate matter or other combustion products dhwnwind of the fire. The NIST model, ALOF (A Large Outdoor Fire plume Trajectory)( is based on the conservation equiations that govern the introduction of hot gases and particulate matter form a large fire into the atmosphere. Because it is based on the fundamental equations rather than empirical correlations, simulations of burning in areas of very mountainous terrian, like the southern Alaskan coast, can be handled very easily using digitized terrain data at roughly 100 m resolution. The model has been applied to regions in Alaska, and predictions of distances from the fire where combustion product conentrations fall below ambient air quality standards have been made.
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