Adding water to liquid fuels can make them nonflammable; substantial amounts of water are required to do so for highly volatile fuels. A limited amount of water being required to eliminate the flammability of low-volatility fuels would enable adjustments to be made to fire and explosion (F&E) hazard assessments for such fuels and the requirements for preventing F&E hazards of various regulations. This study developed a novel generic model for determining two critical parameters used to assess F&E hazards and that can be leveraged to eliminate these hazards: (1) the maximum water composition in the liquid phase for which the aqueous solution remains flammable and (2) the maximum flash point (FP). The model was verified using experimental data on nine low-volatility aqueous−organic mixtures and published data on eight high-volatility aqueous−organic mixtures. The model made acceptable predictions for ignitable chemicals with an FP range of −19 to 145 °C. Both the simulations and measurements revealed that only a small amount of water is required to render low-volatility fuels nonflammable, whereas substantial amounts of water are required for highly volatile fuels. The proposed model and present results can be employed to reduce the cost of F&E protection.

在液体燃料中加水可以使其不易燃；对于高挥发性燃料，需要大量的水。消除低挥发性燃料的可燃性所需的水量有限，可以对此类燃料的火灾和爆炸（F&E）危险评估以及各种法规中防止 F&E 危险的要求进行调整。本研究开发了一种新颖的通用模型，用于确定用于评估 F&E 危害的两个关键参数，并可用于消除这些危害：(1) 水溶液保持易燃的液相中的最大水成分；(2)最大闪点（FP）。该模型使用九种低挥发性水有机混合物的实验数据和八种高挥发性水有机混合物的已发表数据进行了验证。该模型对 FP 范围为 -19 至 145 °C 的可燃化学品做出了可接受的预测。模拟和测量都表明，仅需要少量的水即可使低挥发性燃料不易燃，而高挥发性燃料则需要大量的水。所提出的模型和目前的结果可用于降低 F&E 保护的成本。