- Author
- Liu, Z. | Kim, A. K. | Carpenter, D.
- Title
- Extinguishment of Large Cooking Oil Pool Fires by the Use of Water Mist Systems.
- Coporate
- National Research Council of Canada, Ottawa, Ontario
- Report
- NRCC-46970
- Book or Conf
- Combustion Institute/Canadian Section, Spring Technical Meeting. Proceedings. May 9-12, 2004, Ontario, Canada, 1-6 p., 2004
- Keywords
- pool fires | extinguishment | water mist | oils | flame extinguishment | experiments | equations | water sprays
- Identifiers
- industrial oil cookers; food processing plants; overheated cooking oil reaching its auto-ignition temperature; facility and procedure for fire experiments
- Abstract
- Industrial oil cookers used in food processing plants have potential involving very severe fire incidents caused by overheated cooking oil reaching its auto- ignition temperature. It is difficult to extinguish such a large pool fire involving an oil surface of several hundred square feet with a few thousand liters of hot cooking oil. It requires flame extinction over the entire surface at once, and at the same time, the oil must be cooled down from its burning temperature to below its flash point to prevent re- ignition. An appropriate fire suppression system is therefore needed for the protection of industrial oil cookers. The National Research Council of Canada, with CAFS Unit Inc., initiated a project to study fire hazards associated with industrial oil cookers and water mist fire suppression technology for the protection of large industrial oil cookers. Two water mist systems with different nozzle types were developed and evaluated in full-scale fire experiments. This paper describes these experiments and results. The impacts of the type of water mist system and their configurations, discharge pressure, oil quantity in the cooker, and hood position on the effectiveness of the water mist systems for suppressing large cooking oil fires are discussed.