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FIRE SERVICE AND GENERAL FIRE SAFETY TOPICS => Technical Advice => Topic started by: John Dragon on October 06, 2009, 07:04:28 PM
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Filling station contacted us today, saying that as from next week they will selling diesel with an ethanol content, (I don't yet know percentage ethanol content).
Their question was - do we need to change our extinguishers?
They currently have powder extinguishers on the forecourts.
Is it safe to assume that the ethanol content will be low enough to not make any difference?
Thanks in advance, John.
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Stick with what you have this won't be a problem. Funny you mention ethanol being added to derv - someone i know mentioned this to me yesterday and said Esso are adding eth to petrol. Why is that?
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I understand that its a stab at improving sustainable fuel technology. Probably translates to more profitability tho.
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Thanks for the reply BTW!!
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If you have powder then it doesn't really matter.
Polar solvents are only an issue with foam extinguishers. In this case the effect will be based on the %age of Ethanol involved, small amounts should not be significant, particularly for small shallow fires.
Again depending on the circumstances, you could get away with standard foams, but you would need more foam and a greater application rate to compensate for destruction of the foam blanket. Non aspirated spray AFFF is quite vulnerable as there isn't much of a foam blanket to start with, just a thin film.
There was a hoo-hah when unleaded first arrived about difficulties in extinguishing it with one brigade showing the media footage of tray fire tests they had done to show BCF and AFFF being ineffective, but it never became a real issue.
Real polar risks would be best served by aspirating branchpipe extinguishers (you can still get them!) using AFFF-AR or better FFFP-AR and considering dual agent with initial knockdown using high MAP ABC, Monnex or Purple K.
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Many thanks for the replies.
Cheers
John