Exponent has experience investigating chemical releases and evaluating the associated exposure. Chemical releases can occur outdoors as a result of spills, industrial operations, fires, or explosions. Indoor releases can occur from material off-gassing, chemical interactions, or overheated consumer products. Furthermore, malfunction or misuse of combustion appliances can emit carbon monoxide, which can migrate throughout a structure. Whatever the source of the chemical, our engineers can characterize the emission, model the dispersion, and evaluate airborne concentrations.
Exponent’s capabilities include full-scale testing to determine the sources, migration, and airborne concentrations of chemicals within compartments of a facility. The results of these tests can determine the rate of chemical release and quantify the associated exposure. Accumulation of chemical concentrations within a structure depends strongly on the rate of chemical release, migration throughout the structure, and air exchanges of the structure with the outdoors. Exponent has conducted numerical modeling of airborne migration within facilities using well-established Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) codes, including the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s Fire Dynamics Simulator (FDS) and commercial codes such as Fluent and StarCD.
Our services include:
- Smoke damage evaluations
- Carbon monoxide emissions
- Atmospheric emissions
- Dispersion modeling
- Quantifying leak rates
- Off-gassing evaluations
- Filtration systems evaluations