Full scale experiments on water-mist fire-suppression systems in High-Hazard Storages (HHS) – A temperature-based comparison between sole water and water/additive flow

Water-mist systems have gained wide popularity over the last twenty years as an innovative technology in fire protection. Moreover, insertion of additives in the flow is typically applied to provide additional improvements in terms of suppression effectiveness and temperature control. The present work consists of an experimental approach in a real-scale facility, which has been aimed at challenging water mist against severe fire scenarios. The sole water flow is compared to water endowed with a commercial additive, the F-500 by Hazard Control Technologies Inc. As the fire setting, a high-rise storage has been explored: this real scenario is commonly recognized as severely hazardous even by technical standards, because of both its nominal fire load and the designed physical domain. The thermal transient within the test chamber during the fire development has been measured as the main quantitative parameter: K-type thermocouples have been employed to the purpose over a set of remarkable locations. Moreover, the fire evolution has been evaluated through a post-fire estimation of the damages. Despite the large amount of released smoke and smoldering materials, water mist is shown to be efficient in fire control, if endowed with the chosen additive, while the sole water flow does not appear suitable for such hazardous conditions.