On every industrial site where flammable liquids are stored or processed, you are obliged to install fire-fighting foam systems. These types of installations help you to efficiently extinguish a fire. According to upcoming European legislation, fluorine-containing additives must disappear from fire-fighting foam.
Depending on the size of the site, you will need a large amount of fire-fighting foam in different places. To compensate for this, it is advantageous to install a central extinguishing foam supply, which supplies all extinguishing systems. The extinguishing foam concentrate is then pumped over long distances to the foam mixers. The fire extinguishing water is also distributed across your site via separate pipes.
Until recently, to use the system above, a low viscosity extinguishing foam concentrate was used, which is only available with fluorine-containing additives. These additions improved the effectiveness of the concentrate. We call this C6 technology or PFAS molecules.
Presumably a future European law will ban the use of fluorine-containing additives. It is therefore wise to avoid this type of fire-fighting foam concentrate when building new installations. You then use one of the suitable fluorine-free extinguishing foam concentrates for large industrial installations.
Fluorine-free concentrates are called F3 concentrates. They typically have a higher viscosity than traditional concentrates and pseudoplastic properties. This varying fluidity makes it difficult to calculate the pressure losses during pumping. That is also the reason why fluorine-free fire-fighting foam concentrate is still often avoided, even now that additional restrictions are being introduced regarding fluorine-containing additives.
At Somati Systems we decided to tackle this problem. We invested in research into pumping fluorine-free firefighting foam concentrate over long distances. These experiments and extensive practical tests of the calculation model we have set up show that we work very accurately. This makes it very clear that we can supply installations with a central stock that are still future-proof.
An electronically controlled mixing system is used at every location where the extinguishing foam concentrate must be mixed with the extinguishing water. The FoamTronic system allows testing without the need to mix extinguishing foam concentrate and extinguishing water. A direct consequence is that these tests are economically interesting and no waste water is created.