Fire Protection Industry Research Articles

Construction of a β-cyclodextrin-based colloid containing silicon, phosphorus and nitrogen components: Toward enhancing flame retardancy of flax fabrics

Natural cellulose fabrics, as one of the combustibles prone to causing indoor fires, are modified with flame retardants encouraged by the fire protection industry. Herein, a bio-based colloid named ASDPC was prepared by 3-aminopropyltriethoxysilane, diethylenetriaminepentakis(methylphosphonic acid) and β-cyclodextrin, and used to enhance the flame retardancy of flax fabrics via the pad-dry-cure method. The treated flax fabrics named ASDPC-FF showed good flame retardancy with a damaged length of only 6.4 cm in the vertical burning test and a limiting oxygen index value of up to 33.8 %. Meanwhile, ASDPC-FF exhibited thermal stability and combustion behavior distinct from untreated flax fabrics. Thermogravimetric analysis presented that the char residue produced by ASDPC-FF at 800 °C was as high as 36.2 %. Cone calorimetry test indicated that the peak heat release rate and total heat release of ASDPC-FF decreased by approximately 89.0 % and 35.7 %, respectively. Furthermore, compared to untreated flax fabrics, condensed-phase and gas-phase studies found that ASDPC-FF turned into expanded char and produced fewer gaseous volatiles containing C-H, CO and C-O-C at high temperatures. More importantly, ASDPC-FF remained self-extinguishing after 25 laundering cycles with flame retardancy surpassing untreated flax fabrics. In summary, this work provides a novel route for expanding the manufacture of flame-retardant flax fabrics.

Design fire scenarios for hazard assessment of modern battery electric and internal combustion engine passenger vehicles

Full-scale fire testing of battery electric (BEVs) and internal combustion engine (ICEVs) passenger vehicles has historically shown peak heat release rates (HRRs) ranging from 5–10 MW. However, the vehicles tested in these studies are smaller with less energy capacity than vehicles currently on the market. This paper presents a model to extrapolate data from full-scale vehicle fire tests to evaluate the fire hazard associated with larger passenger vehicles. The model is validated on 20 full-scale vehicle experiments in the public literature and is then used to develop conservatively bounding fire scenarios for vehicles representative of the current market environment. No significant difference was observed in the HRRs between the similarly sized ICEVs and BEVs in this work; however, the predicted HRRs for both vehicle types significantly exceeded existing design guidance. While the model may be shown to be overly conservative in future testing, it is validated using the data that currently exists, and points to an alarming trend in the fire protection industry, where the hazard posed by single passenger vehicles may exceed existing design guidance.

Water Mist Fire Suppression Systems for Building and Industrial Applications: Issues and Challenges

Interest in water mist fire suppression has increased within the fire protection industry due to its ability to control the spread and development of fire without using environmentally damaging agents. Water mist fire suppression has been used for many years in various applications such as machinery spaces, combustion turbine enclosures, and onboard passenger sea vessels. Now there is a demand to use this firefighting method to protect other fire risks such as cooking areas, commercial buildings, residential buildings, electrical equipment, road tunnels, bushfire (wildland fire) protection, and nuclear power generation facilities. To support this industry demand, this review covers the fundamentals of water mist, its suppression mechanisms, areas of application, existing research and development, and the codes and standards related to design. This comprehensive review provides a clear history of water mist suppression. It is able to identify the issues and challenges related to the technology to help pave the way for future research and development that will improve these systems to a level so that they are suitable for these new applications and meet the industry demand for nontoxic fire suppression systems.

Retracted] Parameter Optimization and Performance Analysis of Composite Substance That Can Prevent Burning Based on Machine Learning

In the past 30 years, a substance that can prevent burning has played an important role in reducing the loss of life and property caused by fire. At present, the total amount of antibaking agent is second only to plasticizer and various plastic additives in the world. With an average annual growth rate of 0.5% from 2019 to 2021. The fire protection industry is a regulatory industry and a globally competitive industry. Therefore, the entry into force and gradual improvement of relevant laws and regulations at home and abroad will affect the pattern of the whole fire protection industry. China’s “Twelfth Five‐Year Plan” will bring a substance that can prevent burning into key development industries and form a strategic alliance for technological innovation of green substance that can prevent burning industries. It provides a policy platform for the development of a substance that can prevent burning in industry. Firstly, we introduce several common a substance that can prevent burnings, then we use machine learning method to establish prediction model and to analyze the performance of composite combustibles. And draw the conclusion: composite material is better than the other two composites; among the six machine learning algorithms, the gradient boosting regression (GBR) model has the best prediction ability, followed by the extra tree regressor (ETR) model and the random forest regressor (RFR) model. Compared with the above three integrated algorithms, Ridge, Ada Boost regressor (ABR), and Lasso regression algorithms have relatively poor prediction results.

“Deregulation is so nineteen eighties, we’re into ‘better regulation’ now”

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore how organizations operate in the absence of a clear regulatory authority in a self-regulating environment. Significant moves towards self-regulation by various political administrations, together with successive waves of deregulation raise questions about the ability and effectiveness of industries and markets to regulate their own behaviour. This is a topical political and social concern with governments often appearing to favour self-regulation as opposed to the constitution of an official regulator. The absence of a regulator and the possibility of voluntary compliance raise a number of issues for the way in which organizations operate and the consequences, both intended and otherwise for organizations and society at large. Design/methodology/approach Empirically the authors explore the case of an industry leader within the Passive Fire Protection industry, as it adjusts to an increasingly self-regulated market environment. The authors document how organizational members make sense of the regulatory environment and the behaviour of actors within it. Findings The authors find that discourses of enterprise that underpin self-regulation permit actors a choice between compliance and non-compliance. Whilst also noting the prevalence of notions of morality in terms of how actors make sense of both compliant and non-compliant behaviour. Despite common sense notions that morality is seldom clear cut or unambiguous, the case study reveals that frameworks for understanding behaviour allow participants within the industry to make very clear demarcations between moral (compliant) and amoral (non-compliant) behaviour. Originality/value The authors learn how those that are compliant within the industry come to question the effectiveness of the regime to which they comply, thus ultimately undermining the integrity of the regime. In the absence of a strong regulatory regime, some agents draw upon notions of enterprise to justify an individualist, economic and pragmatic approach that makes non-compliance permissible. Thus the discourse of enterprise is present in the justification of both “moral” and “amoral” behaviour, this leads the authors to question the wisdom of policy that promotes the idea of enterprise as effectively ensuring compliance.

Regulators, Conformers and Cowboys: The Enterprise Discourse, Power and Resistance in the UK Passive Fire Protection Industry

This article draws on industry-level research to explore the enterprise discourse in the UK passive fire protection industry. It highlights the theoretical weaknesses of the enterprise discourse by questioning the assumption that employers and managers necessarily support enterprise. It examines how employers, not just employees, may seek to resist or evade enterprise and how, far from offering a united front, employers may oppose each other. The article points towards the need for industry-level studies due to the limitations and potentially misleading insights that can flow from organization-level studies. Overall, it is argued that there may be more common ground between employees and employers in terms of opposition to enterprise than has previously been suggested.

The selection criteria of global distributors in the fire protection industry

In the supply chain of the fire fighting protection industry, the selection of the right overseas distributors is a strategic advantage for the manufacturer. Improper selection of a potential overseas distributor can negatively affect the supply chain performance. Thus, this research tries to point out the current selection criteria used by the fire fighting and fire alarm products manufacturers (FF/FA PMs). In addition, the research attempts to determine how FF/FA PMs evaluate the following four criteria to select the overseas distributors: 1) influence in the market; 2) financial strength; 3) commitment; 4) logistical capabilities. The conclusion of this study is that selecting the right overseas distributor is a main requirement for FF/FA PMs' effective performance. It is recommended that the company who looks to become an overseas distributor for FF/FA PMS should know the manufacturers' requirements from the distributors; also; manufacturers should have predetermined criteria based on which they can select distributors who can represent them in the market.

Sustainable Buildings and Contemporary Fire Protection Regimes in Australia

There is a long-term politics of regulating fire protection for the built environment in which the principal adversaries have been building developers - and often their government supporters- on one side, and the insurance industry and fire brigades on the other. Underlying such politics have been questions about the short-term versus long-term costs and benefits of fire protection with an emphasis on safety and security if life and property. In this struggle ‘green’ issues were regarded as merely a matter of customer preference rather than regulation. Over the past decade or so, environmental questions have emerged as a focal issue in fire protection. Ostensibly, general agreement has been reached promoting the idea of environmentally sustainable buildings with respect to fire prevention, albeit with disputes over the best means to produce such sustainability. While the fire protection industry promotes a vision of these differences being reconcilable through technological progress, this paper argues that the current politics reflects long-term political and economic divisions and scarcely reconcilable understandings of fire protection that go to the heart of what ‘sustainability’ is in the built environment.

An Investigation of the Criteria Used in Selecting Overseas Distributors: The Case of Fire Protection Industry

An Investigation of the Criteria Used in Selecting Overseas Distributors: The Case of Fire Protection Industry

Clean Agent Selection Approached by Fuzzy TOPSIS Decision-Making Method

It is well known that halons are ozone-depleting substances and their release into the atmosphere has contributed in the last decades to the reduction in the ozone layer. In consequence to the Montreal Protocol, an international agreement designed to gradually eliminate the use of such substances, fire protection industry researchers faced the challenge of finding effective solutions to replace halon extinguishers. This research aims to provide a method to support the decision maker in the selection of the most suitable extinguisher substance for a specific application. According to such framework, a set of quantitative and qualitative criteria has been established in the decision-making problem. Such criteria have been properly regrouped in clusters in order to better evaluate their relative importance by means of AHP method and the criteria have been used for scoring the alternatives. The choice of an extinguisher substance rather than another has been subsequently carried out by means of a fuzzy TOPSIS approach, which reflects the vagueness of qualitative criteria.

COST-BENEFIT ANALYSIS OF SPRINKLERS FOR PROPERTY PROTECTION IN NEW ZEALAND PARKING BUILDINGS

The provision of fire protection measures in parking buildings is an ongoing debate within the fire protection industry. This article presents a cost-benefit analysis model for the installation of sprinklers for the property protection of these structures. An event tree analysis is used to evaluate vehicle fires in parking buildings drawing on data from New Zealand and international fire statistics. The event tree analysis is then applied to the cost-benefit model in which several scenarios relating to the type of parking building and the availability of sprinklers are considered. A case study is presented for a public parking building with a total floor area of 30,000 m (sup)2 and the most critical factors in determining the cost-benefit ratio are identified using a Monte-Carlo sensitivity analysis. Using the cost-benefit model and from a building owner's point of view it is found that an economical automatic sprinkler system does not justify itself in a parking building. Language: en

Fire protection ‐ adapting to changes in EU standards in the UK

The European Union is currently undergoing a programme of new legislation relating to health and safety. Changes in fire safety legislation and standards, though much publicised by many of the leading companies in the fire protection industry, are still causing widespread confusion. Among the issues that the changes are raising is the speed with which the new legislation and standards have to be implemented and the costs involved in effecting a radical and immediate changeover to new standard equipment.

The Evolution of HAZARD, the Fire Hazard Assessment Methodology

The United States alone spends $700 billion a year on new and renovated construction. About 20% of this money assures safety from unwanted fires, and this portion includes the cost of insurance to families and businesses. This enormous cost could be reduced by introducing fire safe products to the building and transportation industries, both in the United States and abroad, and by introducing advanced detectors, suppression systems, and firefighting equipment to the fire protection industry. In order to show that these products and mechanisms are safe to use, industries need performance measures. Performance-based fire standards are currently being developed to augment prescriptive standards around the world.

The macro quality assurance system for fire safety engineering

The comprehensive application of fire safety engineering in modern buildings makes the quality of fire safety equipment a very important aspect of the achievement of fire safety. With its direct relevance to the safety of human life and property, the quality of fire safety engineering in buildings is of concern not only to builders and their clients, but also to various social groups and organizations, ranging from government bodies and business organizations to the individual users of the buildings. Results of the recent research by the authors indicate that the government, insurers, quality certification bodies, building authorities, fire authorities, and trade and professional bodies significantly influence the development of quality assurance in the fire protection industry in the United Kingdom. In this article, the authors explore how these social groups and organizations play their roles in the development of a macro system for quality assurance in the fire protection industry in the U.K.

Use of halon and alternatives for fire protection in control rooms

Recent concern about the depletion of the ozone layer has forced global restrictions on the production of halon. Current regulations (both international and domestic) that will impact the cost and availability of halon fire protection are discussed. Changes in the method previously used to design and use halon systems are described. Measures taken by the fire protection industry to secure the continued availability of safe, effective fire extinguishing systems are examined. Programs using the current halon agents are discussed, including design changes, modification of the NFPA standards, and the initiation of halon recycling. New extinguishing agents are described. The combination of halon initiatives and new agent development will allow ample time for conversion of existing halon systems to the next generation of fire protection technology.< <ETX xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">&gt;</ETX>