- Author
-
Ahonen, A.
|
Holmlund, C.
|
Kokkala, M.
|
Weckman, H.
- Title
- Comparison of Petrol and Commercial Heptane in Mechanical Foam Extinguishing Tests.
- Coporate
- Technical Research Centre of Finland, Espoo
- Report
-
Research Report 130,
October 1982,
37 p.
- Contract
- NORDTEST-277-81
- Keywords
-
fire tests
|
fire extinguishment
|
expansion
|
hydrocarbons
|
fire extinguishing agents
|
acceptance criteria
|
mechanical foam
- Abstract
- The determination of the extinguishing capability of mechanical fire extinguishing foams has traditionally been made by performing extinguishing tests on burning trays containing motor petrol. This liquid has several drawbacks: it is a mixture of several hydrocarbons that vary both seasonally and geographically, causing poor reproducibility; it also contains carcinogenic compounds and its use may thus be restricted in some countries. Therefore it would be useful to replace petrol with a well defined and possibly nontoxic liquid. The paper reports the results from 24 extinguishing tests with three low expansion and one high expansion foam liquid on burning trays containing both petrol and a hydrocarbon mixture with a boiling range of 80...110 deg. C, known as 'commercial heptane'. The results show that petrol can be replaced by this hydrocarbon mixture in the case of low expansion foams without any need of changing the acceptance criteria of the test methods. In extinguishing tests with high expansion foams, however, petrol cannot be replaced without considerable changes in the acceptance criteria.