• 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.

• Fire Science and Engineering
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• v.33 no.4
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• pp.77-82
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• 2019

Fire extinguishing systems are essential equipment in all indoor facilities to address unexpected fire scenarios, and appropriate fire extinguishing agent should be used depending on the place and object to protect. Among these, gaseous fire-extinguishing systems are used to protect electronic equipment. Therefore, inert gases that do not undergo chemical reactions are used mainly in those systems. On the other hand, recently, owing to the high integration of electronic equipment, there are some cases, in which large noise generated from gaseous systems damage the electronic equipment. In this study, numerical analysis of the discharge noise with various nozzle contraction angles was carried out to improve the gas fire extinguishing system. Numerical analysis was carried out using ANSYS FLUENT ver 18.1. The causes of the noise were elucidated using the swirl distribution. The noise level of the modified model was reduced by approximately 6 dB compared to the reference model, which is similar to the result of a previous study, confirming the validity of the method.

• Fire Science and Engineering
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• v.26 no.6
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• pp.1-6
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• 2012

There are specific indications about additional gas for the unencloseable openings of the carbon dioxide extinguishing systems. But there are no indications for other gas extinguishing systems including clean agent extinguishing systems only have the principle when it need, apply it. Therefore, this study suggested applying the equation of additional gas for the unencloseable openings of the carbon dioxide to all of the other fire suppression gas that we are use.

• Fire Science and Engineering
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• v.29 no.1
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• pp.60-66
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• 2015

The present study was aimed to analyze enclosure integrity test, which is the performance experiment of soaking time, in a fire zone equipped with gaseous extinguishing system in an effort to find understand the effect of precaution factors upon the success of fire extinguishment. To achieve the goal of this study, it divided the fire zones of internal and external power plants into ones taking precaution measures and not taking them and then enclosure integrity test was given respectively. Therefore, this study examined the success rate if the test according to the presence and absence of the precaution measure and confirmed the failure factors, designed concentration soaking time and proportion of leakage area to total volume area by type of gaseous extinguishing system and rooms. Precaution measures were applied to the fire zones without them to confirm the increase of the success rate of enclosure integrity test. By doing so, it was found that reduced number of experiments caused by failure led to cost saving.

• Fire Science and Engineering
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• v.30 no.2
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• pp.43-48
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• 2016

One of the main problems with gaseous fire extinguishers is the decrease in fire suppression capability due to the leakage of the fire extinguishing agents, either naturally or caused by obsolete equipment. Therefore, in this study, a real-time detector module for monitoring pressure leakages was developed and an assessment on its performance was carried out. Currently, there are no domestic or global standards for testing pressure leakage detection systems. Therefore, similar global standards, such as ISO 7240 and FM 1421, and the domestic law on "Receiver type-approval and technical standards for product inspection" were used as a reference for assessing the performance of the newly developed module. Its basic performance was assessed by applying compressed air to the module, and, as a result, the minimum working pressure was identified as 0.3 bar. Its environmental qualification was carried out to confirm the proper functioning of the module in different climates and the module was confirmed to function properly at both high ($50^{\circ}C$) and low ($-10^{\circ}C$) temperatures.

• Fire Science and Engineering
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• v.29 no.5
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• pp.51-56
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• 2015

In this study, optimal design methods were applied to the agent discharge flow of clean agent fire extinguishing systems. The methods combined optimal design theory and engineering theory for engineering analysis in a design program or coast savings in value engineering. Optimal design parameters were determined to optimize the agent discharge flow based on the design theory of the clean agent fire extinguishing systems and the theory of optimal design. The design factors were verified in regard to suitability for the performance of fire extinguishing systems. The results provide a foundation for optimal design method methods in other fire extinguishing systems. Optimization of the agent discharge flow of the discharge nozzle was confirmed by the constraints on the inner diameter of the discharge nozzle and the pipe, agent arrival time, flow, and pressure variation of the agent. The deviation of discharge pressure and agent time of the agent discharge nozzle were found to correlate with the pressure variation.

• Proceedings of the Korea Institute of Fire Science and Engineering Conference
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• 1997.11a
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• pp.598-605
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• 1997

In recent years, the number of vehicle fires, as well as the number of motor vehicles, has been increasing rapidly. Therefore, several types of automatic fire suppression systems for the engine compartment of automobiles have been developed to extinguish automobile fires, and most of these systems use halon 1301 as a fire extinguishing agent. Due to environmental concerns, the phase-out of halons has been announced, so now there is a need to replace halon 1301. For this, a 1,1,1,2,3,3,3-heptaflouropropane (HFC-227ea, FM-$200^{TM}$) gas-filled Aqueous Film- Forming foam (known as AFFF) extinguisher was devised even though air foam extinguishers could be used. This is because the air in the foam bubbles is a source of oxygen required for the combustion reaction. It can be surmised that it is possible to increase the fire extinguishing efficiency of AFFF by filling in foam bubbles with a gaseous extinguishing agent. The best choice is the FM-$200^{TM}$ gas-filled AFFF, Which has the maximum expansion ratio of 62:1. This makes it possible for the expanded foam to rapidly fill the engine compartment.

• Fire Protection Technology
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• s.10
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• pp.13-18
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• 1991

It seems that the use of one of the major fire-fighting agents-halon-is going to be denied to the fire protection community at the end of the century. It is now being widely accepted that the CFC and halons released into the atomosphere are contributing to both the depletion of the ozone layer green house effect. Therefore, we should research to determine suitable alternative(gaseous) fire extinguishings agents to the halons and improve or develop other extinguishing systems.

• Fire Science and Engineering
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• v.29 no.4
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• pp.26-32
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• 2015

Carbon dioxide principally extinguishes fires by smothering, but an acceptable amount of extinguishing agent is needed. To assure the performance of carbon dioxide systems in Korea, computer programs certified by NEMA are being applied in system design. But the design errors can occur because the geometry of a model test facility is not the same as that of the actual fire area. Since the discharge rate tends to vary considerably with the flow pattern in a pipe, an on-site discharge test is necessary to ensure the performance of the system, especially with low pressure carbon dioxide. Technical standards for carbon dioxide systems do not give detailed guidelines for discharge tests at present. Based on comparative analysis of standards and practical tests, this paper suggests a methodology for on-site discharge tests.

• Fire Science and Engineering
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• v.30 no.4
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• pp.103-110
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• 2016

While the demand for the gas system fire extinguishers increases every year, there are insufficient safety measures for assessing the extinguishing performance, such as system safety and reliability in the preparation of increasing demand, which has emerged as a social problem. One of the most critical causes of accidents occurring with the gas extinguishing system is pressure leakage from the extinguishing agent storage container. This is considered to be one of the critical factors on which the success of fire suppression depends. In this study, its safety measure was studied, Because it was deemed urgently necessary. The newly developed pressure leakage monitoring system is a system monitoring storage condition, pressure, leakage and discharge of the storage container related to agent concentration, which is one of the critical factors for fire suppression. This was developed to be applicable to the $CO_2$ and HFC-23 systems. Therefore, for structural safety analysis, the safety performance was verified by the fluid structure coupling analysis of the safety problems that may occur when the pressure leakage monitoring system is applied to the gas fire extinguisher. For analysis programs, the FloEFD program from Mentor Graphics was used for computational fluid dynamics analysis and ABAQUS from Dassault Systems was used for structural analysis. From the result of numerical analysis, the structure of $CO_2$ did not develop plastic deformation and its safety was verified. However, plastic deformation and deviation issue occurred with the HFC-23 monitoring system and therefore verified the structural safety of pressure leakage monitoring system by data obtained from redesigning and adjusting the condition of numerical interpretation three times.