VATIS UPDATE Article

A team of researchers from State Key Laboratory of Disaster Prevention & Reduction for Power Grid Transmission and Distribution Equipment, Hunan Electric Power Corporation Disaster Prevention and Reduction Center, State Grid Key Laboratory of Power Transmission and Distribution Equipment Anti-icing & Reducing-disaster Technology, China, have proposed a new low-flow and high-lift firefighting approach for the application of wildfire near transmission lines.

To solve the challenges, the researchers developed a comprehensive firefighting equipment set which consisted of a high-effective suppressant agent with properties to prevent reignition and a mobile firefighting platform with long-distance and high-lift features. The liquid suppression agent improved the effectiveness of fire suppression while reducing the consumption of water significantly.

As the hydraulic flow was decreased for a given volume of water, the hydraulic pressure was increased. In this way, the platform can produce a hydraulic pressure over 120 bar for an effective lift of 500 m. The results of field experiments demonstrated that the proposed approach is able to control wildfires over a long distance and high lift, which proved the effectiveness of the approach.