Evaluation of Water Additives for Fire Control and Vapor Mitigation - Two and Three Dimensional Class B Fire Tests

Background Various water additives are available in today’s marketplace that claim to provide advantageous performance characteristics for fire control and vapor mitigation. Of particular interest are additives that report to provide superior fire suppression capabilities through emulsification or encapsulation. A scientific assessment of these various additives is lacking, and the fire protection community would benefit from an evaluation of the various available water additives for fire control and vapor mitigation. This paper reports on FPRF-sponsored testing of these agents, performed by JENSEN HUGHES at the Underwriters’ Laboratories facility in Northbrook, Illinois. Prior to testing, a comprehensive evaluation was performed to clarify the benefits of using water with additives for fire suppression versus water without additives. It was found that potential users of water additives have performance criteria for most scenarios of interest, as established by NFPA 18A. The Sponsors and Technical Panel agreed that a Class B scenario was of most interest. It was desired to use a test scenario that could be associated with real-life conditions, not just as a scaled down scenario. Representative water additive agents were tested against Class B fire threats which provided a generic, comparative analysis between water and water additives. The three fire scenarios used in this test series were: (1) a two-dimensional (2D) pool fire, (2) a three-dimensional (3D) Class B flowing fuel fire, and (3) a three-dimensional Class B flowing fuel fire within a two-dimensional pool fire. Diesel was used as the fuel for all tests; the flashpoint of the diesel fuel was between 136–138 oF. Water and three representative additives were applied from a sprinkler array using a modified UL 162 suppression test approach. The performance enhancement associated with the additives was evaluated by comparison with water alone.

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