High pressure fire-extinguishing device - HDL 250 Physics of extinguishing - environment-friendly fire-extinguishing agents

The high pressure fire-extinguishing device HDL 250 – Physics of extinguishing

Water is the most natural and ecologically beneficial means of fire-fighting on this earth. Water is almost limitlessly available – as underground water, surface water, seawater or tap water. Water has unique physical characteristics. It is the element on this earth which has the highest specific heat (heat requirement to alter its temperature) and the highest energy requirement to transform into another state of aggregation (ice, water, steam).

Water is a guarantor for the moderate climate on our earth as it has a balancing influence on the immense energies of insolation and space coldness by vaporisation (evaporation) and condensation (rain).

OERTZEN’s high pressure fire-extinguishing procedure with HDL 250 makes use of the unique physical characteristics of water by employing its extremely rapid atomized water.

HDL 250 does not want to drown fire but quench it by using the energy of the fire, i. e. the procedure uses the energy of the fire to cease it.

The higher the energy output of the fire is, the better is the success of extinguishing.

This leads to the conclusion that not the massive use of water for extinguishing fires guarantees the success of extinguishing but the limited use of atomized extinguishing water in order to achieve the quenching effect by vaporization and simultaneously extracting energy.

Apparently this seems to be contradictive, however, can be explained by showing the water’s physical parametres of reaction:

• In order to heat up one litre of water from 20°C to 99°C an energy supply of approx. 79 kcal is needed.
• However, to transform one litre of water into the state of steam, an energy supply of 539 kcal is needed (hence nearly the 7-fold demand for energy of the heating-up from 20°C to 99°C). It is to be noted that a demand for energy during fire-fighting also always means an extraction of energy out of the seat of fire.
• If one litre of water is vaporized by appropriate extraction of energy a steam volume of approx. 1,700 litres will result. Steam is an invisible, non-toxic, hot gas which is in a position to massively alter the gas balance in the fire.
• For the content of oxygen (normally 20.93% in normal air) has only to be reduced to 15% by producing steam to quench a fire.
• Consequently, a single litre of vaporized water is able to control a fire volume of minimum 7 m³ (7,000 litre).

Under high pressure (250 bar), emerging with high speed (approx. 710 km/h) the HDL 250 produces atomized water which quickly vaporizes in the fire (without considerable increase of pressure) thus leading to the immediate quenching of the fire.

The high speed of the atomized water guarantees the successful fire-fighting also in inaccessible and non-passable areas (wall panellings, false ceilings, et al).