VATIS UPDATE Article

Research has showed that combining cooling and oxygen dilution could be even more effective than either one alone. Victaulic Company, the United States, has achieved this combination with the use of nitrogen gas to atomize the water and act as a particle carrier to penetrate fire plumes. The Victaulic team focused on a method of injecting the atomized droplets into a nitrogen “down-blast” to penetrate into fire plumes to get to the root of the fire for more efficient cooling using smaller than typical droplets, which collectively present a greater surface area.

The larger the surface area, the faster that heat may be absorbed. A high rate of heat absorption reduces the risk of fire propagation by reducing convective and radiative heat transfers. The Victaulic Vortex Fire Suppression System was the first to be approved in this FM category and because it uses a blend of inert clean agent gas and water mist, it is suitable for special hazard machinery spaces, turbine enclosures and flammable liquids. The Victaulic Vortex system uses a supersonic jet stream of nitrogen to atomize a low-pressure stream of water into sub-10-micron water droplets.

The droplets are as little as one 30th the size of water particles delivered by traditional water mist systems and provide as much as 50 percent more heat absorption and total extinguishing. As the water droplets are atomized, they are evenly mixed with the nitrogen molecules and discharged into the hazard space in homogeneous suspension. Typically, in other twin-fluid technologies, nitrogen is a propellant of another suppressing agent like water mist, but the Victaulic Vortex system uses the water mist and nitrogen as complimentary extinguishing agents. Contact: Victaulic Company, 4901 Kesslersville Road Easton, PA 18040, USA. Tel: +1-610-559-3300.