• Fire Science and Engineering
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• v.21 no.4
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• pp.1-11
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• 2007

This study aims to investigate, review, and summarize the definition, development, and applications of "percent agent in pipe", "percent of agent in pipe" which is used as a key factor in testing and evaluating the performance of gaseous fire extinguishing agents, including Halon 1301 and $CO_2$. This study also analyzes and compares the local and international standards on testing and evaluating the performance of gaseous fire extinguishing systems, as well as the results of system performance tests conducted as a part of performance evaluation and approval programs for gaseous fire extinguishing systems, especially, Korean Gaseous Fire Extinguishing System Performance Approval Program called KFI Approval. Percent agent in pipe was defined first in NFPA 12A, Standard on Halon 1301 Fire Extinguishing Systems, dating back to the 1970's. After the phaseout of Halon 1301 systems in 1994 in the developed countries, the percent agent in pipe has been widely used in Halon 1301 alternative clean agent fire extinguishing systems, both halocarbon clean agent systems and inert gas clean agent systems, as an essential criterion to assure the system design accuracy, determine the limitations and performance of a system, and to predict the system performance results accurately, especially, in association with their system flow calculations. Underwriters Laboratories has their own standards such as UL 2127 and 2166 applying percent agent in pipe in testing and evaluating the performance of clean agent fire extinguishing systems. As a part of a system performance test and approval program called KFI Approval System, Korea also has started to apply the percent agent in pipe as a key factor to test, evaluate, and approve the performance of gaseous fire extinguishing systems, including both high and low pressure $CO_2$ systems, from the early 2000's. This study outlines and summarizes the relevant UL and KFI standards and also describes the actual test resultant data, including the maximum percents of agent in pipe for gaseous fire extinguishing systems. As evidenced in lots of tests conducted as a part of the system performance test and approval programs like KFI Approval System, it has been proven that the percent agent in pipe may work as a key factor in testing, evaluating, and determining the limitations and performance of gaseous fire extinguishing systems, especially compared with the hydraulic flow calculations of computer design programs of gaseous fire extinguishing systems, and will remain as such in the future. As one thing to note, however, there are some difficulties in using the unified percent agent in pipe to determine the maximum lengths of pipe networks for gaseous fire extinguishing systems, because the varying definitions used by some of the flow calculations (not in accordance with NFPA 12A definition) make it impossible to do any direct comparison of pipe lengths based on percent agent in pipe.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Safety
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• v.33 no.3
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• pp.46-51
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• 2018

A basic sprinkler system is a fire extinguishing system that can be easily installed in a fire-vulnerable place such as a publicly used establishments. However, the publicly used establishments are not only complicated in structure, but also have a large amount of flammable interior materials, and the users are not normally in a normal state, which is a very dangerous fire-fighting object. Therefore, due to the low fire extinguishing performance of the basic sprinkler system installed in the publicly used establishments, the fire suppression control can not be performed quickly in case of fire, which may increase the life and property damage. In this study, the cases of quantitative changes of extinguishing water used in basic sprinkler system and the cases of addition of additives such as wetting agents, reinforced agents to improve extinguishing performance were compared. Experimental results showed that the extinguishing performance was improved as the quantity of extinguishing water increase and the reinforced agents showed similar performance to that of 60% increase in the amount of extinguishing water. The cooling time to $200^{\circ}C$ and oxygen concentration were improved up to 14.3% and 34.5%, respectively. In the case of using the wetting agent, the cooling time to $200^{\circ}C$ and oxygen concentration did not show any significant improvement, but showed the effect of preventing deep seated fire. In order to prevent loss of life and property, it is necessary to improve the performance of the basic sprinkler system by increasing amount of extinguishing water or using additives like reinforced agents.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Safety
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• v.34 no.3
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• pp.28-35
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• 2019

Dry water is a core-shell structured powder which comprises a very fine water core covered with hydrophobic silica particles. Recently, the dry water has attracted attention as a new type of fire extinguishing agents. However, characteristics of the dry water as a fire extinguishing agent have not been revealed until now. To our best knowledge, this is the first work to uncover effects of particle size of the dry water on the fire extinguishing performance. Pristine dry water, which has heterogeneous particle size distribution, was carefully separated by sieving method into three fractions which were a small size (ca. $110{\mu}m$) fraction, a medium size (ca. $220{\mu}m$) fraction and a large size (ca. $400{\mu}m$) fraction. Microscopic observations confirmed the effective separation of dry water's particle size. In extinguishing tests of wood cribs fire, the medium size dry water showed most excellent fire extinguishing performance, as compared to other dry waters having small (ca. $110{\mu}m$) and large (ca. $400{\mu}m$) particle size. The good performance of the medium size (ca. $220{\mu}m$) dry water may be attributed to the balance between cooling effect of the water core and smothering effect of the silica particles. It is also revealed that small size dry water has poor flowability than large size dry water.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Safety
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• v.28 no.6
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• pp.23-28
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• 2013

In order to improve extinguishing performance of water mist, many studies of additives have been conducted. In this study, viscosity agent which has the ability to improve extinguishing performance by adhering to the surface on fire was used and fluorine-free surfactant was also added to water to enhance water's wetting ability. This study aimed to verify optimal concentration of extinguishing of additives according to fire source and extinguishing performance by comparison with pure water. In case of wood crib fire, the results show that flame suppression and extinguishing time of sodium alginate 0.4 wt.% are 3.4 times and 2.2 times shorter than those of pure water in 0.2 MPa respectively. It seems that large amount of water adhere to surface on fire, thus cooling effect on surface was enhanced. Also water consumption of sodium alginate 0.4wt.% is up to 65% lower than that of pure water. In case of heptane fire, extinguishing time of cocobetaine 0.1 wt.% is 9.7 times shorter than that of pure water in 0.2 MPa. It is thought that because cocobetaine can block oxygen and suppress oil mist by making emulsion film on fire surface due to a low surface tension. On the other hand, water consumption of cocobetaine 0.1 wt.% is 92% lower than that of pure water.

• Fire Science and Engineering
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• v.34 no.2
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• pp.147-155
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• 2020

This paper presents a study on the development of a fire extinguishing agent and extinguishing system for an energy storage system (ESS) fire. The fire extinguishing agent designed to extinguish an ESS fire is a highly permeable fire extinguisher that reduces the surface tension and viscosity while bringing about cooling action. This is the main extinguishing effect of this type of wetting agent, which displays the characteristics of fire extinguishing agents used for penetrating the battery cells inside the ESS module. For the fire extinguishing system, a local application system was designed to suppress fire on a rack-by-rack basis. A 360° rotating nozzle was inserted into the rear hall of the ESS module, and general nozzles were installed in the rack to maximize the fire extinguishing effect. The fire extinguishing agent was strongly discharged by virtue of the gas release pressure. Experiments on fire suppression performance with ESS module 1 unit and module 3 units showed that all visible flames were extinguished in 8 s and 9 s, respectively, by the fire extinguishing agent. In addition, based on confirming reignition for 600 s after the fire extinguishing agent was exhausted, it was confirmed that the ESS fire was completely extinguished without reignition in all fire suppression performance experiments.

• Fire Science and Engineering
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• v.28 no.2
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• pp.20-25
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• 2014

In this study, the extinguishing performance evaluation of wetting agent for wood crib was conducted by using a scale model equipment that we designed. To confirm the optimal conditions of the experiment, a test was changed amount of fire extinguishing water and the number of timber. As a result, the discrimination of the fire extinguishing performance was seen only when 20 pieces of wood and the extinguishing water of 100 mL were used. After evaluating the extinguishing performance of domestic and foreign wetting extinguishing agents under these conditions, a reignition was occurred in only when we used water. In addition, the discrimination of extinguishing performance was seen through the temperature distribution according to the time of watering. Based on the results of this experiment, this study is expected to be able to use as a basis on presenting a method of optimized performance evaluation of wetting extinguishing agent.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Safety
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• v.29 no.4
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• pp.78-84
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• 2014

Viscosity agents were added to water to improve extinguishing performance of low pressure water mist suppression system on wood cribs fire, and a small scale wood cribs fire experiment was conducted to measure the extinguishing performance. CMC and agar were used for viscosity agent and as the amount of viscosity agent enlarges, it showed the increase of the viscosity of aqueous solution and the decrease of the fluidity. On wood cribs fire experiment, the extinguishing efficiency was improved with supplemental viscosity agent as it enhanced the adhesive time of aqueous solution on the wood, and therefore expanded the contact time of fire surface. The surface tension of aqueous solution was decreased with the addition of agar which to be assumed as an increase factor of extinguishing efficiency. By the extinguishing experimental result, the most effective extinguishing agent was CMC 0.6 wt.%, with the flame suppression time and the extinguishing time were reduced by 70s and 93s respectively at this concentration.

• Fire Science and Engineering
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• v.26 no.6
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• pp.15-23
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• 2012

Indirect Test Method is often used instead of direct test method in test method for extinguishing performance of $CO_2$ extinguishing facility because of high cost, environment problems and difficulties of procedure. But in the danger facilities for a unit of nation, such as a petrochemical plant, a nuclear power plant, or etc. is better to verify the performance of the extinguishment through direct discharge test. In $CO_2$ extinguishing system for total flooding system installed in dangerous facilities in Korea, each protected area in surface fire and deep-seated fire had selected and verified of extinguishing performance of $CO_2$ extinguishing facilities. To get recognized as extinguishing performance, discharged $CO_2$ concentration to protected area should be equivalence with design concentration standards (NFSC and NFPA). The Design Concentration means that $CO_2$ extinguishing agent is considerate of concentration for percentage of allowance (20 %) from extinguishing concentration which available to control of flame. As test result, surface fire and deep seated fire in protected area is obtained $CO_2$ design concentration and maintained design concentration more than 20 minutes as deep-seated fire. Through this study, we introduced direct discharging test method and decision method. And furthermore, especially in the dangerous facilities as a unit of Nation, we suggested necessity about reliability of extinguishing facilities to use direct test method.

• Fire Science and Engineering
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• v.23 no.2
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• pp.78-84
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• 2009

We carried out fire extinguishing experiments with three kinds of water mist nozzle system. Fire extinguishing experiment according to installed nozzle height and fuel pan location was done. And fire extinguishing performance was compared with plain water and foam agent mixed solution. Water mist nozzle height was varied with 4m, 3.5m and 3m and position of fuel fan was varied 0.5m and 1m from the center of water mist nozzle. Foam agent that used in this experiment is 3% type of AFFF (Aqueous Film Forming Foam) solution. Experimental result showed the door opening effect was little. Fire extinguishing performance of foam agent mixture water mist was better than the plain water mist only.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Safety
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• v.30 no.4
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• pp.79-85
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• 2015

Onboard fire extinguishing system is important to protect cargo and human lives and every oil tanker has foam type fire extinguishing system. Because of environmental problem, agent which contains materials such as Perfluorinated compounds are regulated and the development of the environmental friendly agent is required. The protein foam has less environmental pollution problem and has an excellent fire extinguish performance to oil fire. In the research, bivalency metal salts were added as stabilizer to increase fire resistance and stability of the foam. Ferrous sulfate, Iron chloride and Nickel chloride were used and to adjust to vessel, sea water was applied. As a stabilizer increased, the expansion ratio was raised. However 25% drainage time was decreased over 2.0 wt.% which is knowable that the foam brokes easily. The amount of generated foam was measured to check fluidity of foam and it appeared that when $FeSO_4$ 1.2 wt.% was added, the amount of generated foam reached large and also the 25% drainage time was high. To evaluate the fire extinguishing performance for oil fire, the small scale oil fire test was executed. When $FeSO_4$ 1.2 wt.% was added, fire extinguishing time was in its shortest which informs fluidity of foam and stability are important factors on fire extinguishing efficiency.