Extinguishment Effectiveness of some Powdered Materials on Hydrocarbon Fires Available to Purchase

THE SUBJECT OF FIRE EXTINGUISHING is always of importance to those of our readers who use oil in bulk, whether fuel or lubricating oil. Studies with small ‘model’ fires at the National Bureau of Standards, U.S.A., will therefore be of interest. This work provides additional basic knowledge on the effectiveness of chemical powders as extinguishing agents. In these experiments, the relative extinguishment effect of various dry chemical powders was measured by means of model heptane fires of 1⅛, 6 and 22.8 in. dia. and results have been discussed by T. G. Lee and Dr. A. F. Robertson. Although this type of information can be obtained by studying full‐scale fires, the cost is excessive. In the studies at the Bureau one objective was to find a correlation between the extinction effectiveness of a powder and the size of the fire model.