Fire Suppression of Gasoline Pool Fires Using Metal Oxide

Abstract

Fire suppressants have a great role in controlling fire accidents, with the use of proper fire suppressants, the loss can be greatly reduced. Metal oxides can be used as fire suppressants. A new type of dry powders with capsular structure is to be fabricated for fire suppression, in which the content of water approached 60%. The capsules with the size of 3~5 μm consist of liquid core and solid shell, where the core is water droplet and the shell is assembled silicon dioxide particles with surface hydrophobic modification. Two different scaled real fire tests showed that thus-prepared solid powders could extinguish 0.21 MW gasoline pool fire in 2.0 s with agent mass of 0.055 kg, and 1.0 MW gasoline pool fire in 5.0 s with agent mass of 0.49 kg. Such fire extinguishing performance greatly outperformed the conventional mono ammonium phosphate (ABC) powders, neat silica powders and water mist, with significantly reduced fire extinguishing time and mass of agent consumed. Mechanism of the core-shell particles in fire suppression was discussed based on established theories and experimental results.