legislative requirements, it also meets all of those
in the foreseeable future. It utilises new technology
and has several major advantages over other
Halon alternatives.
The high performance fire-extinguishing agent
has a negligible impact on the environment and is
designed to protect essential and delicate telecom-
munications and data processing equipment. It
also has applications within the cultural heritage
sector protecting artefacts that would otherwise
be destroyed by water from traditional sprinkler
systems. It has an insignificant global warming
potential, lower than any of the halocarbon
agents acceptable for use in occupied spaces.
When discharged, SAPPHIRE leaves nothing
behind to damage sensitive electronic equipment
or documents, and with no agent clean-up
required, business critical installations can be back
in operation in the shortest possible time. Similarly,
priceless historic manuscripts do not have to be
subjected to years of restoration work.
Carbon dioxide
Surprisingly perhaps, there are those that,
mistakenly, question the use of CO2 because of
its connotation with global warming, the inter-
national desire to reduce CO2 emissions, and its
inclusion in the Kyoto Protocol's basket of gases.
This misunderstands the difference between CO2
that occurs naturally in the atmosphere, and the
large quantities of undesirable CO2 emitted as a
by-product of many industrial processes.
The CO2 used as a firefighting suppressant is
extracted from a number of natural CO2 pro-
ducing processes, and is then stored until it is
needed.
However, CO2 is most certainly not suitable for
total flooding applications in normally occupied
rooms or enclosures, as its discharge in fire
extinguishing concentrations would be lethal to
room occupants. CO2 does however continue to
be a popular and versatile choice for total flooding
of unoccupied enclosed special-hazard areas such
as power generation equipment, spray booths and
turbines. An essential consideration though is to
ensure that the flooded areas are adequately
ventilated after discharge of the CO2 to prevent
the accidental exposure of personnel to dangerous
levels of CO2 when investigating the cause of the
discharge.
One particularly attractive feature of CO2 is that
it can be compressed into a liquid state which,
when maintained under pressure, requires a
smaller storage footprint than many other gaseous
suppression agents. Additionally, as CO2 has so
many other commercial uses, refills are readily
available throughout the world.
The new suppression paradigm
The contribution made by the discharge of
environmentally damaging gaseous fire sup-
pression systems, is dismissed by some as being
inconsequential. After all, they argue, they are
primarily used to protect business critical assets
and are believed to account for little more than
three percent of the market. While this may well
be true, discussion around the use of environmen-
tally questionable agents is unlikely to abate.
Additionally, following the demise of Halon
1301 and the forced decommissioning of Halon
suppression systems, the business community is
more than ever focused on adopting sustainable
solutions. Such solutions are also rightly seen as
perhaps the only way of more effectively manag-
ing the world's resources, reducing waste and
safeguarding the global environment. IFP
INTERNATIONAL FIRE PROTECTION 63
DEMAND INCREASES FOR CLEAN AGENTS
CLEAN AGENTS

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