Monitoring & metering
liquefied gaseous extinguishing systems during the life of the system once it is installed and commissioned.
ROOM INTEGRITY MONITORING - THERE REMAINS A WIDER PROBLEM TOO
This is essential under ISO 14520 where gaseous extinguishing systems have to be designed in relation to the discharging agent hold-time (if the room cannot hold the agent due to leaks, the agent will disperse and not extinguish the fire) and discharging agent peak pressure (if the pressure is too high for partition walls or suspended ceilings they will be blown apart or damaged and possibly destroy the room integrity). At the design stage of a fire extinguishing system, rooms are tested for room integrity by positively pressurising a room and detecting escaping pressure to verify that the room itself into which the gaseous extinguishant discharges on actuation can both hold the agent after its discharge and hold its pressure on actuation. The fire system is then installed and commissioned. But over the next 10 years, few further tests are made on room integrity and the cylinders are merely hydrostatically tested to ensure they can cope with their design pressure limits. How can one be sure, therefore, that on actuation the room will hold the discharged agent to extinguish the fire and that its partitions and ceilings are capable of withstanding the
event of data centre damage is far higher than that of the physical assets themselves. It is almost incalculable. And yet insurers are asked to underwrite them and the fire industry asked to deliver their protection at the cheapest price. Who today in the security industry would consider installing an alarm system without monitoring its status in addition to its actuation and without integrating its monitoring centrally into the building management system? Who would build a ship or offshore platform and fit it with, say, power-generating auxiliary machinery without installing emergency power systems or monitoring their condition states ? These are basic engineering principles. All good engineering demands the monitoring of dynamic structures and a highly pressurised cylinder is a dynamic structure. It is designed to protect a critical infrastructure or asset. Without constant monitoring, a risk is generated in the very environment for which it is designed to reduce risk. The risk is not only to the asset, but to the people who work in the asset and their ability to enable business continuity in the high value asset under risk. Coltraco Ultrasonics aims to be the lead technical authority in the constant monitoring of liquefied and non
Instrumentation Monthly November 2022 55
pressure of the agent on discharge? The Portascanner AIRTIGHT is used to locate and quantify even minor leak sites quickly, easily, and non-destructively.
CONCLUSION The fire industry has access to customers who depend on it to deliver fire engineering to protect their risks. Insurance companies underwrite that risk. But the importance of mathematics is high, whether in the application and understanding of the formulae used to calculate design concentrations of gases and flow rates, or in the deployment of fundamental engineering principles to protect dynamic pressurised systems and the structures they are working so hard to protect against the risk of fire.
Coltraco Ultrasonics
coltraco.com
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