# Question about "ptfire" inline emission file structure

**URL:** <https://forum.cmascenter.org/t/question-about-ptfire-inline-emission-file-structure/401>\
**Category:** SMOKE\
**Created:** [November 7, 2018, 9:05pm UTC](https://forum.cmascenter.org/t/question-about-ptfire-inline-emission-file-structure/401 "2018-11-07T21:05:37Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![ehsan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/96bed5/32.png) [@ehsan](https://forum.cmascenter.org/u/ehsan)\
**Post date:** [November 7, 2018, 9:05pm UTC](https://forum.cmascenter.org/t/question-about-ptfire-inline-emission-file-structure/401/1 "2018-11-07T21:05:37Z")

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Hello,

I processed a fire case inside SMOKE and created **inline** files and ran CMAQ with them, but CMAQ results do not represent days of the fire accurately.

I was wondering how data is organized inside inline emission files? For example, what does ROW and COL represent? Those values are different from ROW/COL numbers in my **emis\_mole** files.

I would appreciate if someone points me to a documentation about that.

Also, is there a way to visualize inline emission files to confirm that emissions are processed correctly?

I am using NEI2011-ek.

Thanks.

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**Author:** ![lizadams](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/49beb7/32.png) [@lizadams](https://forum.cmascenter.org/u/lizadams)\
**Post date:** [November 8, 2018, 10:06pm UTC](https://forum.cmascenter.org/t/question-about-ptfire-inline-emission-file-structure/401/2 "2018-11-08T22:06:55Z")

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I found the following documentation that describes that SMOKE treats the wildfire as a point source:  
“In addition, wildfire sources require the latitude and longitude source attributes to locate the fire. Note that all emissions for a fire will be assumed to come from the single grid cell that contains the latitude and longitude of the fire.”  
[https://www.cmascenter.org/smoke/documentation/4.6/html/ch02s03s02.html](https://www.cmascenter.org/smoke/documentation/4.6/html/ch02s03s02.html)

You may be able to process the inline emissions file using the SMOKE Utility program:  
[**Inlineto2D**](https://www.cmascenter.org/smoke/documentation/4.6/html/ch05s03s07.html) merge CMAQ Inline 2D emissions with stack group emissions to create a gridded emissions file that you could then check with VERDI.

You can also try a search using the PDF version of the SMOKE documentation, I was using the keyword fire: [https://www.cmascenter.org/smoke/documentation/4.6/manual\_smokev46.pdf](https://www.cmascenter.org/smoke/documentation/4.6/manual_smokev46.pdf)

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**Author:** ![bbaek](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex027/user_avatar/forum.cmascenter.org/bbaek/32/22_2.png) [@bbaek](https://forum.cmascenter.org/u/bbaek)\
**Post date:** [November 9, 2018, 5:50am UTC](https://forum.cmascenter.org/t/question-about-ptfire-inline-emission-file-structure/401/3 "2018-11-09T05:50:36Z")

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Hi Ehsan,

That is a good question. Since inline emissions file is not gridded, ROW is used to represent number of sources and COL has been set it to 1.

BH