This presentation will describe the experimental program undertaken to test the performance of a novel firefighting foam against the current Class B foam technology. The novel foam involved the use of a chemical reaction between dissolved species to generate inert nitrogen gas in situ. It was theorised that the performance of this in-situ nitrogen foam (ISNF) would likely exceed that of current compressed air (CAF) systems given the inert nature of the nitrogen gas.

The experimental program encompassed the utilisation of the DEF(AUST)5706 test standard for measuring the suppression and burnback performance of the ISNF as well as that of compressed air and aspirated foam technologies. All tests were performed using the same two types of surfactant concentrates in order to accurately determine the effect of the generation technology on the foam performance.

The three kinds of foam (i.e., aspirated, CAF and ISNF) were also characterised in terms of their bubble size distributions and drainage rates. Bubble size analysis placed the size distribution of the ISNF midway between those of aspirated and compressed air foams, whilst drainage performance was found to be comparable to that of compressed air foam, though slightly faster. The suppression tests identified a substantial improvement in the performance of the ISNF in comparison to traditional aspirated foam systems in some areas.

It was found, however, that there was no significant difference between the suppression results obtained using the ISNF and those achieved using compressed air foam. Owing to the chemical requirements of ISNF, the cost of the technology is higher than regular compressed nitrogen foam and as such its deployment would be limited to niche applications in which the use of compressed air/nitrogen systems is undesirable.

About the speaker

Professor Bogdan Dlugogorski gained undergraduate degrees in chemical engineering and geophysics from the University of Calgary, and MEng and PhD, both in chemical engineering, from McGill University and École Polytechnique de Montrèal, respectively. Recently he was awarded a DSc degree in fire science and engineering from the University of Newcastle. He spent 15 months at the National Fire Laboratory of the National Research Council, Canada, before joining the University of Newcastle, Australia in 1994, where he is now Professor in Chemical Engineering and Director of the Centre for Energy.

He is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering, Engineers Australia, and the Royal Australian Chemical Institute. His research interests cover energy, especially CO2 sequestration, as well as fire and explosive chemistry, with special focus on fire suppression and formation of toxic products in fires. His career’s output includes over 200 publications.

Contact details

Prof Bogdan Z Dlugogorski, Director, Research Centre for Energy The University of
Newcastle, Australia
Email: Bogdan.Dlugogorski@newcastle.edu.au
http://www.newcastle.edu.au/research-centre/energy/

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