- Title
- Suppression performance comparison for aspirated, compressed-air and chemically generated Class B foams
- Creator
- Laundess, Ashlea; Rayson, Mark; Dlugogorski, Bogdan Z.; Kennedy, Eric M.
- Relation
- Suppression and Detection Research and Applications: A Technical Working Conference (SUPDET 2009). Suppression and Detection Research and Applications: A Technical Working Conference (SUPDET 2009): Proceedings (Orlando, FL 24-27 February, 2009)
- Relation
- http://www.nfpa.org/itemDetail.asp?categoryID=993&itemID=43828&URL=Research/Fire%20Protection%20Research%20Foundation/Proceedings
- Publisher
- Fire Protection Research Foundation
- Resource Type
- conference paper
- Date
- 2009
- Description
- This paper describes the experimental program undertaken to test the performance of a novel firefighting foam against the current Class B foam technology. The novel foam involved the use of a chemical reaction between dissolved species to generate inert nitrogen gas in situ. It was theorised that the performance of this in-situ nitrogen foam (ISNF) would likely exceed that of current compressed air (CAF) systems given the inert nature of the incorporated nitrogen gas. The experimental program encompassed the utilisation of the DEF(AUST)5706 test standard for measuring the suppression and burnback performance of the ISNF as well as that of compressed air and aspirated foam technologies. All tests were performed using the same two types of surfactant concentrates in order to accurately determine the effect of the generation technology on the foam performance. The three kinds of foam (i.e., aspirated, CAF and ISNF) were also characterised in terms of their bubble size distributions and drainage rates. Bubble size analysis placed the size distribution of the ISNF midway between those of aspirated and compressed air foams, whilst drainage performance was found to be comparable to that of compressed air foam, though slightly faster. The suppression tests identified a substantial improvement in the performance of the ISNF in comparison to traditional aspirated foam systems in some areas. It was found, however, that there was no significant difference between the suppression results obtained using the ISNF and those achieved using compressed air foam. Owing to the chemical requirements of ISNF, the cost of the technology is higher than regular compressed nitrogen foam and as such its deployment would be limited to niche applications in which the use of compressed air/nitrogen systems is undesirable.
- Subject
- firefighting; foams; compressed air; in-situ nitrogen foam; suppression tests
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/919972
- Identifier
- uon:9035
- Language
- eng
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