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ISSN Druckformat: 2150-766X
ISSN Online: 2150-7678
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GAS AND PARTICULATE EMISSIONS FROM LIVE-FIRINGS DURING MILITARY TRAINING
ABSTRAKT
Air and particulate emissions are a growing concern in both military and civilian activities around the world. Over the last five years in Canada, they have become more important to defence projects specifically for two aspects: live-firing training and demilitarization. Recently, for the live-firing aspect, the Canadian Department of National Defence (DND), and especially Defence Research and Development Canada (DRDC) – Valcartier, have performed several trials to sample air and particulate emissions from firings of various Canadian munitions: small arms and large calibres. For the demilitarization aspect, the United States (U.S.) Department of Defence (DoD) began a program on the characterization of air emissions from open burning and open detonation. Canada shares the same interests and also wants to determine the nature and the quantity of substances dispersed in the environment from open burning and open detonation. This paper will present an overview of the sampling methods developed at DRDC Valcartier to collect gas and particulate emissions at the muzzle of a gun from live-firings during military training. In fact, two types of set-up, outdoor and indoor, were used to study gas and particulate emissions from live-firing. Combustion gases, semivolatile and volatile organic compounds, and particle emissions obtained from these two set-ups will be presented. It was observed that the indoor set-up allowed the detection of extra compounds compared to the outdoor set-up for which the dilution effect is too important to detect them. Moreover, the influence of propelling charges, i.e. the amount of gun propellant in the combustion chamber for the firing, on air emissions quality will be discussed. Finally, for the demilitarization aspect, the Canadian program that began in 2012 will be presented.