- Author
-
Smith, A. C.
|
Ng, D.
|
Ryan, M. W.
|
Lazzara, C. P.
- Title
- Method to Evaluate the Performance of Coal Fire Extinguishants.
- Coporate
- Bureau of Mines, Pittsburgh, PA
- Report
-
RI 9392,
1991,
15 p.
- Keywords
-
fire extinguishers
|
fire extinguishing agents
|
coal mines
|
fire prevention
- Abstract
- The U. S. Bureau of Mines developed an experimental method to evaluate the relative effectiveness of water additives on the extinguishment of coal fires. The experiments were conducted in the fire zone of the multiple-entry section of the Bureau's Bruceton Experimental Mine. Four-hundred-pound Pittsburgh Seam coalbeds were ignited and allowed to burn until well-developed fires were achieved. Extinguishing agent-water solutions were then applied to the fires, and the quantity required to extinguish the fires was compared with the quantity of water alone required to extinguish similar fires. A 20% diammonium phosphate-water solution required an average of 5.8 gal to extinguish the coal fires, while two commercially available additive-water solutions required an average of 8.1 and 8.0 gal, respectively. The average amount of water required to extinguish the fires was 7.4 gal. An analysis of covariance, using the thermal energy of the coalbed to quantify the fire at the time of extinguishment, showed that the diammonium phosphate-water solution was slightly more effective at extinguishing these coal fires than water alone, and the two commercially available additive-water solutions were statistically equivalent to water alone.