‘Combustible ice’ to help extinguish fires
Scientists from the Tomsk Polytechnic University have proposed the use of gas hydrates, or artificial ‘combustible ice’, for fire extinguishing and localisation of fires. The effectiveness of this method has been confirmed by numerous experiments, RIA Novosti reports.
Gas hydrates are crystalline compounds formed under certain thermobaric conditions from water and gas. They are also called the frozen fuel of the future or ‘combustible ice’. One of the areas of their application is fire extinguishing.
Scientists have conducted over two hundred experiments on the localisation and suppression of combustion of various materials. For this purpose, the ignition conditions were reproduced in the four most common situations: in case of careless handling of fire, violation of the rules for operating heating equipment, short circuit of electrical networks and the occurrence of local fire sources. Experiments with gas hydrate in the form of powder and tablet samples were carried out both with indoor and outdoor fires.
Scientists have developed physical and mathematical models for the localisation and suppression of combustion of various substances and materials, and also began work on the creation of hydrates, which include surfactants. Under certain conditions, such a hydrate also allows the creation of a foam that blocks oxygen and promotes the localisation of combustion and thermal decomposition of the material. The developed combined model for predicting the dissociation and combustion of hydrates is unique and has no analogues. In the future, the researchers plan to develop several devices in which the resulting hydrate in contact with a burning material will effectively block and localise combustion.
“The main reason why gas hydrates are still not used to extinguish fires is the lack of data on the combustion conditions under which they are effective, and the lack of technologies for transporting, storing and supplying hydrate to the combustion zone. The scientists of our laboratory are busy solving these issues,” explained the Head of the Heat and Mass Transfer Laboratory, Professor of the Scientific and Educational Centre named after I.N. Butakov, Pavel Strizhak.
