Fire supression cylinder explosion at Welwyn Garden City

[Chris Houston]

Really?  It is a trade name.  Seems very unprofessional of them.

[devon4ever]

I heard the term Freon mentioned by the BBC yesterday when reporting the accidental release of fire extinguishing system on a Russian submarine in the Pacific, (killing 20 crew members and injuring several more).

How odd that this Freon has been involved in two totally separate yet fatal incidents.

I assume the incident on the Russian Sub asphyxiated the poor souls, if so then this Freon is a far cry from extinguishing suppresion agents I have had dealings with, (nitrogen /air mix) that will provide a 12% oxygen breathable atmosphere and this is deemed low enough to not support the propogation of flame therefore extinguishing any fire, (it should also be noted that any such system must be integrated with visual and audible alarms before activation and a method of ventilating the media post-application)

I may be a bit hazy on my distant recollections but I also remember Freon being used as a gas vapourising to its liquid state in large industrial fridge plants etc

[Allen Higginson]

Freon is used in the auxillary power units on 737's as the extinguishant -

There is only one APU fire bottle, despite the fact that the handle can be turned in either direction! It is filled with Freon (the extinguishant) and Nitrogen (the propellant) at about 800psi. When the fire handle is turned, the squib is fired which breaks the diaphragm on the bottle, the pressure of the nitrogen then forces the freon into the APU compartment which suffocates the fire.

[Psuedonym]

I have been told: WGY was Argonite. The installer (sub contracted by Kidde) was installing the last of 16 bottles, over balanced and the bottle fell hitting the others.
All fell some losing the valves including the original one which shot off as did a number of others "like a line of torpedos". The initial victim was a plumber 2 rooms away.
None had been battoned to the wall and all had their caps off.
Kidde's top brass were brought in by the HSE on Sunday.

[Allen Higginson]

I have been told: WGY was Argonite. The installer (sub contracted by Kidde) was installing the last of 16 bottles, over balanced and the bottle fell hitting the others.
All fell some losing the valves including the original one which shot off as did a number of others "like a line of torpedos". The initial victim was a plumber 2 rooms away.
None had been battoned to the wall and all had their caps off.
Kidde's top brass were brought in by the HSE on Sunday.

How many times did they follow this procedure and this didn't happen?
A terrible but avoidable accident.

[Goodsparks]

http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2008/11/06/worker-killed-in-accident-at-uk-data-center-site/

[Chris Houston]

Gents,

I'm sorry, but I cannot accept speculation/rumours/"I heard from a mate" about things in this thread.  If you want to tell the forum about something you read about, please include the source.  If you have original/new research on it, please put in your full contact details including home address so that the lawyers approach yourselves rather than FireNet - trust you get my point.

Sorry/thanks,

Chris.

[spanner]

In the last building I worked in I was looking after over 100 suppression systems on the one site.
We had a system discharge due to an aircon unit pipe melting.

When the system discharged the horizontal manifold all the bottles connected broke away from the vertical manifold which went on to supply the room, this in turn made the entire bottle bank come away from the wall and fortunately only moved about a foot across the room.

The system was installed by a company who I shall not mention, but in short there was about 20 bottles attached to a unistrut which was fasened to a wooden bord which was suppossed to be bolted to the wall, But was infact fixed to the wall with plaster board fixings.

Makes you wonder how some companies can get away with it?

Once I work out how to post pictures I shall put a few up, It puts things into perspective.

[AnthonyB]

Use photobucket or send them me & I will post them up for you.