Assessment of Improving the Efficiency of Fire Extinguishing by Using Surface Active Agents

Fire causes considerable material damages to the ecology and environment as well as in a number of cases it is accompanied by human victims. No material goods can replace human life, therefore human life and safety always remain in the first place. Since fires potentially can cause a considerable damage, the fire safety and firefighting sphere are permanently developing in the world in order to improve the state of fire safety, reduce the risk of fires, successfully extinguish the fire and minimize the potential consequences. Since successful firefighting is closely associated not only with the level of fire-fighting equipment, extinguishing techniques, manufacturing and construction methods, building constructive solutions, but also to a large extent depends on efficiency of the extinguishing agents, the authors' aim is to study the efficiency improvement of water and its mixtures with surfactants. The article is based on the experiments, which were carried out under laboratory conditions, simulating Class A and B fires. A stationary automatic fire extinguishing system was used as the fire-fighting equipment with a sprinkler-type system, providing firefighting with a sprinkler, feeding extinguishing agents into a hotbed in a fine spray stream. In the practical experiment, foam concentrates of different producers, brands and types were used as surface-active substances and impurities which were added to water in different concentrations and combinations. The concentration of active surfactants in water directly affects fire-extinguishing properties of liquids, i.e., observing the amount of surfactants and water liquids one can achieve the reduction of the amount of water, which allows to reduce material loss connected with using water in fire extinguishing. However, an in-depth study must be carried out to find out how economically profitable is the use of SAA for fire extinguishing.