A Relationship between the Flash Point, Boiling Point and the Lean Limit of Flammability of Liquid Fuels

Abstract

The premise: of this paper is that a flame would flash over the surface of a liquid fuel, upon subjecting to Ian external ignition source, only if the (fuel vapor+air) mixture in gas phase contains enough fuel to be above the lean limit. Based on this coupling between thermodynamics and chemical kinetics, the lean limit is shown to be related to the flash point temperature through the fuel's latent heat of vaporization and boiling point temperature. The deduced relationship is applied to a wide collection of hydrocarbon and carbohydrate liquid fuels to discover that the postulated hypothesis bears merit for further study to benefit both the state-of-the-art of liquid ignition and the rationale underlying the ASTM standard tests for flash point measurement.