Performance Evaluation of Water Mist with Mixed Surfactant Additives based on Absorption Property

Abstract

Abstract The leaking of hazardous, flammable hydrocarbons, such as methane, possesses potential risk to generate accidents of fire or explosion. The conventional technique is water mist which can reduce the environment concentration of flammable gas and manage accidents of fire caused by hazardous hydrocarbons leaking, but pure water mist extremely restricts its popularization and application due to the poor solubility of hydrocarbons. Therefore, the mixed surfactant is used as water mist additive for its excellent physical and chemical nature, and its performance is investigated and evaluated experimentally. A formula of mixed surfactant additive has been developed and the physicochemical properties of water mist with mixed surfactant additive were measured. Additionally, the present work establishes a series of lab-scale experiments to study absorption capacity and gasoline pool fire suppression performance of water mist with mixed surfactant additives and the effect factors. The concentration transient within the test chamber has been evaluated during the absorption experiment. Results showed that water mist with mixed surfactant additives is shown to be efficient in absorbing methane, especially under the condition of low methane concentrations, water mist with 5% mixed surfactant, absorbing time less than 150s had best absorption capacity. Furthermore, the addition of mixed surfactant in water mist can shorten fire suppression time and restrain fire enhancement effectively at the beginning when extinguishes the oil pool fire. The water mist with mixed surfactant additives will greatly promote the large-scale application of water mist technology used to manage accidents of hazardous hydrocarbons leakage or fire.