• Fire Science and Engineering
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• v.21 no.4
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• pp.1-11
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• 2007

This study aims to investigate, review, and summarize the definition, development, and applications of "percent agent in pipe", "percent of agent in pipe" which is used as a key factor in testing and evaluating the performance of gaseous fire extinguishing agents, including Halon 1301 and $CO_2$. This study also analyzes and compares the local and international standards on testing and evaluating the performance of gaseous fire extinguishing systems, as well as the results of system performance tests conducted as a part of performance evaluation and approval programs for gaseous fire extinguishing systems, especially, Korean Gaseous Fire Extinguishing System Performance Approval Program called KFI Approval. Percent agent in pipe was defined first in NFPA 12A, Standard on Halon 1301 Fire Extinguishing Systems, dating back to the 1970's. After the phaseout of Halon 1301 systems in 1994 in the developed countries, the percent agent in pipe has been widely used in Halon 1301 alternative clean agent fire extinguishing systems, both halocarbon clean agent systems and inert gas clean agent systems, as an essential criterion to assure the system design accuracy, determine the limitations and performance of a system, and to predict the system performance results accurately, especially, in association with their system flow calculations. Underwriters Laboratories has their own standards such as UL 2127 and 2166 applying percent agent in pipe in testing and evaluating the performance of clean agent fire extinguishing systems. As a part of a system performance test and approval program called KFI Approval System, Korea also has started to apply the percent agent in pipe as a key factor to test, evaluate, and approve the performance of gaseous fire extinguishing systems, including both high and low pressure $CO_2$ systems, from the early 2000's. This study outlines and summarizes the relevant UL and KFI standards and also describes the actual test resultant data, including the maximum percents of agent in pipe for gaseous fire extinguishing systems. As evidenced in lots of tests conducted as a part of the system performance test and approval programs like KFI Approval System, it has been proven that the percent agent in pipe may work as a key factor in testing, evaluating, and determining the limitations and performance of gaseous fire extinguishing systems, especially compared with the hydraulic flow calculations of computer design programs of gaseous fire extinguishing systems, and will remain as such in the future. As one thing to note, however, there are some difficulties in using the unified percent agent in pipe to determine the maximum lengths of pipe networks for gaseous fire extinguishing systems, because the varying definitions used by some of the flow calculations (not in accordance with NFPA 12A definition) make it impossible to do any direct comparison of pipe lengths based on percent agent in pipe.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Gas
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• v.24 no.2
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• pp.36-43
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• 2020

Gas system fire extinguishing equipment is a very economically useful facility, but if it is not used for a long period of time after installing the equipment, there is possibility of rupture due to corrosion of containers and operation errors of equipment systems, and this is very dangerous. However, it is impossible to experiment to check whether the equipment is operating normally. If gas is temporarily released into the enclosed space due to rupture and malfunction, it can cause serious human damage due to gas suffocation. In this study, based on the suffocation death accident of gas system fire extinguishing facility, the inflow path of released gas and the possibility of death and time to death were estimated using a 3D scan and FLACS.

• Proceedings of KOSOMES biannual meeting
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• 2018.06a
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• pp.160-160
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• 2018

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Propulsion Engineers Conference
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• 2001.04a
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• pp.86-89
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• 2001

Present study deals with performance analysis and experimental investigation of an inert gas generator (IGG) which can be used as effective means to suppress fire. The IGG uses a turbo-jet engine to generate inert gas for fire extinguishing. It is generally known that a less degree of oxygen content in the product of combustion will increase the effectiveness of fire extinguishing. An inert gas generator system with water injection has advantages of suffocating and cooling effects that are very Important factors for fire extinguishing. Some aspects of influencing parameters, such as, air excess coefficient, compressor pressure ratio, air temperature before combustion chamber, gas temperature after combustion chamber, mass flow rate of water injection etc. on the performance of IGG system are investigated.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Gas
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• v.11 no.3
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• pp.7-12
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• 2007

The search for a new fire-extinguishing agent with all the desirable properties of halon 1301 has not been successful. To study binary gaseous extinguishing agents instead, one has to determine the extinguishing concentrations for several compositions of a given chemical in an inert gas. This process is expensive and time consuming. The fire suppression efficiencies of gas mixtures of HFC 125 and HFC 227ea with nitrogen as total flooding agents were studied by cup burner method. It was shown that addition of small amounts of those extinguishants to nitrogen can enhance the suppression effectiveness of the inert gas. As expected, the degree of synergism was highest at low concentrations of the chemical. For each binary system, extinguishing concentrations of the pure compounds and one binary data were used to predict the extinguishing concentrations for the entire range of binary composition. The predicted values were very close to experimental data.

• Fire Science and Engineering
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• v.33 no.1
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• pp.99-104
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• 2019

In a gas system fire extinguishing system, extinguishing agents are usually stored with approximately 280 bar at $21^{\circ}C$ and are released at approximately 8 MPa through the decompression valve and orifice to quickly suppress the fire. When extinguishing agents are discharged, they cause a loud noise (approximately 140 dB), which can damage electronics, such as hard disk drives (HDDs). Therefore, the noise is becoming a serious issue in the gas extinguishing system. The method of the noise reduction by adding an absorbent is most general and in this study, the thickness of the absorbent was as a selected design variable. The noise level at the observation point and the flow characteristics inside the nozzle were numerically calculated and analyzed using the commercial code ANSYS CFX ver. 18.1.

• Fire Science and Engineering
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• v.34 no.2
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• pp.147-155
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• 2020

This paper presents a study on the development of a fire extinguishing agent and extinguishing system for an energy storage system (ESS) fire. The fire extinguishing agent designed to extinguish an ESS fire is a highly permeable fire extinguisher that reduces the surface tension and viscosity while bringing about cooling action. This is the main extinguishing effect of this type of wetting agent, which displays the characteristics of fire extinguishing agents used for penetrating the battery cells inside the ESS module. For the fire extinguishing system, a local application system was designed to suppress fire on a rack-by-rack basis. A 360° rotating nozzle was inserted into the rear hall of the ESS module, and general nozzles were installed in the rack to maximize the fire extinguishing effect. The fire extinguishing agent was strongly discharged by virtue of the gas release pressure. Experiments on fire suppression performance with ESS module 1 unit and module 3 units showed that all visible flames were extinguished in 8 s and 9 s, respectively, by the fire extinguishing agent. In addition, based on confirming reignition for 600 s after the fire extinguishing agent was exhausted, it was confirmed that the ESS fire was completely extinguished without reignition in all fire suppression performance experiments.

• Fire Science and Engineering
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• v.30 no.4
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• pp.103-110
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• 2016

While the demand for the gas system fire extinguishers increases every year, there are insufficient safety measures for assessing the extinguishing performance, such as system safety and reliability in the preparation of increasing demand, which has emerged as a social problem. One of the most critical causes of accidents occurring with the gas extinguishing system is pressure leakage from the extinguishing agent storage container. This is considered to be one of the critical factors on which the success of fire suppression depends. In this study, its safety measure was studied, Because it was deemed urgently necessary. The newly developed pressure leakage monitoring system is a system monitoring storage condition, pressure, leakage and discharge of the storage container related to agent concentration, which is one of the critical factors for fire suppression. This was developed to be applicable to the $CO_2$ and HFC-23 systems. Therefore, for structural safety analysis, the safety performance was verified by the fluid structure coupling analysis of the safety problems that may occur when the pressure leakage monitoring system is applied to the gas fire extinguisher. For analysis programs, the FloEFD program from Mentor Graphics was used for computational fluid dynamics analysis and ABAQUS from Dassault Systems was used for structural analysis. From the result of numerical analysis, the structure of $CO_2$ did not develop plastic deformation and its safety was verified. However, plastic deformation and deviation issue occurred with the HFC-23 monitoring system and therefore verified the structural safety of pressure leakage monitoring system by data obtained from redesigning and adjusting the condition of numerical interpretation three times.

• Proceedings of KOSOMES biannual meeting
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• 2017.11a
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• pp.266-266
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• 2017

• Fire Science and Engineering
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• v.19 no.2 s.58
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• pp.69-74
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• 2005

A study of the utilization of inert gas generator(IGG) that generates a large amount of inert gas for the fire extinguishing equipment was performed. In this study, the fire extinction performance of gas generated from a 1GG which is implemented to a gas turbine was investigated. A simulated mixture gas of which composition is the same as that of the gas generated from ICG was used in all experiments. First, the extinction concentration was measured using a cup burner method. The extinction design concentration and the volume of extinction space was calculated by applying the obtained extinction concentration to a method recommended by NFPA 2001. In practical respects, the fire extinction performance of IGG-generated gas was confirmed through the fire suppression experiment within a $2m\times2m\times2m$ room.