MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency
An option for Falklands? Prototype technology for unearthing minefields in peat soil with fire
Engineers have developed prototype technology that uses controlled burning to partially reveal landmines buried in peat soil. The researchers from Imperial College London have developed technology called O-Revealer that ignites peat, causing a smoldering fire that strips the upper layer of soil to reveal the landmines, making it easier to dispose of them. Read full article
Comments
Disclaimer & comment rulesPhoto looks more like some military folks - deminers here are from Zimbabwe. Also if not ready for 5 yrs to try will be irrelevant to Falklands as plan is all areas will be clear before then.Also the last thing one wants to do is set fire to peat! We don't really want to burn half the Islands away to ash and rock!! Once started a fire in peapy ground can go deeo and smoulder way down for several years, periodically resurfacing in new areas and can take a lot of environmentally damaging deep bulldozing to contain it and stop even more destruction.
Aug 23rd, 2017 - 11:12 am - Link - Report abuse +1Me thinks they need to rethink a bit!
Light up some argies and roll then across the field.
Aug 23rd, 2017 - 03:39 pm - Link - Report abuse 0Comment removed by the editor.
Aug 23rd, 2017 - 04:14 pm - Link - Report abuse -5”Smoldering fires, the slow, low-temperature, flameless form of combustion, are an important phenomena in the Earth system, and the most persistent type of combustion. The most important fuels involved in smoldering fires are coal and peat. Once ignited, these fires are particularly difficult to extinguish despite extensive rains, weather changes or firefighting attempts, and can persist for long periods of time (months, years), spreading deep (5 meters) and over extensive areas of forest subsurface. Indeed, smoldering fires are the longest continuously burning fires on Earth. The Burning Mountain, a coal deposit in New South Wales, Australia, has been smoldering since 4,000 B.C....”
Aug 23rd, 2017 - 06:15 pm - Link - Report abuse 0http://wildfiretoday.com/2010/08/20/peat-fires-101/
Mike Summers meeting with London's fire brigade and the Zimbabwean helper already..
Aug 23rd, 2017 - 09:32 pm - Link - Report abuse -6https://youtu.be/-Y2IkM0dhk4
Well the idea - to remove mines - is sound.
Aug 24th, 2017 - 09:19 am - Link - Report abuse +3Admittedly the idea should have been to remove mines while not potentially leaving the area a blackened and ash-smeared mess with the potential for recurring fires for decades to come, but you can't have everything
“We had to destroy the village in order to save it.” (Apocryphal saying from the Vietnam war).
Aug 24th, 2017 - 01:15 pm - Link - Report abuse 0Minefield disposal 100% is proceeding well IN all Falklands peaty areas perfectly well without setting fire to the ground as this braindead twit in a research institute proposes!
Aug 25th, 2017 - 11:40 am - Link - Report abuse +1Now might be more usefull if he can invent a means of clearing sandbeaches and sand dune areas in wildlife reserves and penguin colonies without massive environmental damage.
Those are the real problem areas- after 35 yrs of wind and tide moving sand dunes and beach level changes etc etc
I am one of the co-authors of this work, and wanted to address the comments regarding peat fires: all of these are actually addressed in the paper itself (which is open access, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.expthermflusci.2017.07.016) in the introduction, results and especially conclusions sections.
Aug 26th, 2017 - 02:08 pm - Link - Report abuse -1From the paper, “The question of burn severity to peat was already answered and quantified in [18], which showed that the prolonged heating rates from smouldering result in sterilization of the affected soil layer and in irreversible changes of physical, chemical and biological nature. Therefore, there could be an environmental impact to the soil in the patch of land where the technology is applied. The deployment of O-Revealer in the field will have to take this environmental impact into consideration and minimize it by working on small patches of land, by ensuring the fire does not spread beyond the working patch, and by waiting or creating the right conditions of moisture and wind [15]. “
In addition, “Investigating the issue of the burn severity to peat shows that deployment of O-Revealer in a minefield can have a local detrimental effect on the affected peat layer and patch of land where it is applied. Environmental impact can be minimized by waiting or creating the right condition of moisture and wind.“
In addition, For O-Revealer “the equipment needed to control a smouldering fire would be low cost and consists roughly of electric wires, battery pack to power the igniter, large portable fans for forced ventilation, sand and water to set fire breaks around the patch under treatment, and a portable water system for active suppression.”
@Fire_Science, you had an extra parenthesis in the link to the journal paper, so link is not working. Corrected link: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.expthermflusci.2017.07.016
Aug 26th, 2017 - 02:36 pm - Link - Report abuse +2“....large portable fans....” (there is no need for a portable fan in the South Atlantic)
Aug 26th, 2017 - 07:33 pm - Link - Report abuse 0”....waiting or creating the right condition of moisture and wind.“ (anyone ever tried 'creating' such conditions in the South Atlantic islands? )
“ .... ..sand and water to set fire breaks around the patch under treatment,.....”
Methinks someone is not familiar with the practices involved in suppressing peat fires down here. Containment of even a small and controlled peat fire is no simple matter and may involve deep trenching and with that, considerable long-lived disruption of the local terrain. The firefighting in the 2011-2012 forest fire in the Torres del Paine national park provided some local examples of underground fire spread
And then there is.....
http://wildfiremagazine.org/article/the-long-slow-burn-of-smouldering-peat-mega-fires/
Marti- 100% correct. Fire-Science is nice and scientific- and unrealistic. Controlling peat fires involves large HyMac excavators- Bulldozers - and a hell of a lot of water -if you can find some within a mile and high pressure mobile pumps and piping.And the LAST thing you want is wind!! - and this part of the world we have plenty like you as well.
Aug 26th, 2017 - 09:31 pm - Link - Report abuse 0The fire will be SMALL. A small plot of land will be ignited and controlled at all times and suppressed if it goes out of the bounds of the plot. Plot of land would be something like 5m by 5m each time.
Aug 27th, 2017 - 08:24 am - Link - Report abuse -1FS: “ Plot of land would be something like 5m by 5m each time.”
Aug 27th, 2017 - 03:04 pm - Link - Report abuse 0I don't think there is adequate understanding of the bounds of minefields in the region. Typically a 5m x 5m plot would be bounded on at least two sides (more typically, 3 sides) by a further extension of active or suspected minefield. So the necessary deep trenching to prevent spread of the fire would have to be done within an active minefield? Hello?
Commenting for this story is now closed.
If you have a Facebook account, become a fan and comment on our Facebook Page!