Characterizing the ignition hazard from cigarette lighter flames

The abuse of cigarette lighters, especially by juveniles, poses a serious fire safety challenge. Little information is available on the cigarette ignition performance of these devices or the ignition hazard these devices present to other objects. The current investigation focuses on characterizing the ignition propensity of cigarette lighters through carefully designed and controlled experiments. Cigarette lighters with port-type and Bunsen-type burner designs were adjusted to produce 75 W flames for all experiments. Temperature, heat flux, and ignition propensity measurements were performed in the flame and plume regions above these lighters. Even with the small source sizes used in this investigation, the temperature measurements from both burner types followed the turbulent plume scaling laws and compared favorably with large-scale fire measurements. However, significant differences were observed in the measured heat fluxes from port- and Bunsen-type flames having the same energy release rate of 75 W.