FOCUS
Sprinklers/watermist
and intervening in external building façade fires early and providing rapid suppression. The testing validated that the new Spraysafe autonomous fire suppression (AFS) technology has the capability to rapidly and autonomously fight an early stage fire anywhere within its coverage area. Additionally, the system effectively contained flashover fires and prevented flames from spreading via the exterior of the façade surface, thereby limiting severe damage to the fire’s point of origin.
High risk areas
As well as high rise building incidents, data centres can be vulnerable and face catastrophic damage from fire. In these settings, the release of inert gas fire suppression systems – either accidentally or due to fires developing – have occasionally resulted from the failure of hard disk drives (HDDs) that are extremely sensitive to sound. This has prompted further research by manufactures of suppression systems on how to overcome this problem and develop potential fire protection solutions for these complex environments. Inert gas fire suppression systems are the
traditional method used to protect high risks in data centres, however their high sound levels can damage noise sensitive equipment such as HDDs even though the gas suppression protects other sensitive electrical equipment. A potential solution posed by the industry is a range of acoustic nozzles that have a large area of protection,
28 MARCH 2019
www.frmjournal.com
but a low sound output, ensuring that each piece of valuable data centre technology can be protected effectively. The key to preventing future disasters
is proactively seeking pre emptive innovation, rather than waiting for the next accident or new piece of regulation to galvanise the industry. An outlook that is both global and local will help promote innovation in fire suppression, as developments such as increasingly tall buildings or the demand for expanded storage capacity will be understood both in terms of the specific needs of communities and also international trends and standards. Voluntary collaboration is equally crucial for
furthering the development of new technology, as the example of the automotive industry has shown in recent years.
Sustainable technology
Innovating more sustainable technologies is rapidly becoming a requirement for manufacturers and many are doing so by moving away from agents that have been found to be environmentally damaging. For example, halon systems were commonly used in the protection of high value assets until halon production was halted as part of the Montreal Protocol for contributing to the depletion of the ozone layer. A popular alternative was hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), a man made compound that
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