The cooling performance of halogenated alkane fire extinguishing agent and its quantitative prediction model

Abstract The halogenated alkane fire extinguishing agent inhibits a flame by the utilization of both physical and chemical effects. The cooling performance is an important physical index for various fire extinguishing agents to suppress a fire and prevent re-ignition. Fire extinguishing agent with high cooling performance is of great necessity and need to be developed urgently. However, a profound understanding of quantitative cooling performance for traditional fire extinguishing agents is still unavailable. Presently, a series of experiments are performed to study the quantitative cooling performance of traditional fire extinguishing agents. The test facilities consist of thermocouples, a nozzle, a fire agent tank, a hot plate, and a data acquisition device. The fire extinguishing agents are comprised of FC 114B2 (C2F4Br2), BTP (C3H2BrF3), CFC 13B1 (CBrF3) and HFC-227ea (C3HF7). During the experiments, the temperature change of the hot plate is recorded and averaged by five K-type thermocouples. It indicates that BTP shows a good cooling performance through the analysis of experimental data. A dimensionless model is proposed to predict the cooling performance based on physical parameters and finally verified using two refrigerants, HFC-32 (CH2F2) and HFC-134a (C2H2F4). It provides a potential method for developing and screening the new fire extinguishing agent with high cooling performance.