• Journal of the Korean Society of Marine Environment & Safety
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• v.27 no.5
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• pp.675-682
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• 2021

Fire accidents on land and at sea can cause serious casualties; specifically, owing to the nature of marine plants and ships, the mortality rate at sea from suffocation in confined spaces is significantly higher than that on land. To prevent such cases of asphyxiation, it is essential to install ventilation fans that can outwardly direct these toxic gases from fires; however, considering the scale of marine fires, the installation of large ventilation fans is not easy owing to the nature of marine structures. Therefore, in this study, we developed a new concept for fire safety technology to control toxic gases generated by fires from applied direct current (DC) electric fields. In the event of a fire, most flames contain large numbers of positive and negative charges from chemi-ionization, which generates an "ionic wind" by Lorentz forces through the applied electric fields. Using these ionic winds, an experimental study was performed to artificially control the fire smoke caused by burning paper and styrofoam, which are commonly used as insulation materials in general buildings and ships. The experiments showed that a fire smoke could be artificially controlled by applying a DC voltage in excess of ±5 kV and that relatively effective control was possible by applying a negative voltage rather than a positive voltage.