Experimental study on the synergistic effect of fire extinguishing by water and potassium salts

Abstract

This work experimentally studied the synergistic effect of fire extinguishing by inert extinguishing of water and chemical fire extinguishing of potassium salts. The effect of the combination of water and potassium salts on the effectiveness of the fire suppression compared with that of water and potassium salts used individually was analyzed by measuring the minimum extinguishing concentration of pure water mist, water mist with potassium salts additive and potassium salts dry powder. Results show that water mist containing potassium salts can enhance the fire extinguishing efficiency of pure water and potassium salt dry powder, and the fire extinguishing efficiency is enhanced with the increase in potassium salt content in the solution. Based on the chemical thermodynamic analysis, the essence of synergistic role of water and potassium salts in flame temperature is the existence of water vapor, which can activate potassium salts, thereby easing the generation of a large number of active substances obtained by thermal decomposition of potassium salts at flame temperature, such as gaseous KOH, for fire extinguishing in the equilibrium products.