Extinguishment of liquid fires with sprinklers and water sprays: Description of the tests

An experimental study of extinguishment of liquid pool fires with plain water has been carried out. The number of extinguishment tests was 109, and some additional tests were made to study the free burn characteristics of the pool fires. The extinguishing system consisted of four open sprinklers or nozzles located symmetrically above a pool lying on a weighing platform. The whole test system was set up inside an 18 m high, 14 m wide, and 27 m long tests hall. Tests were made on ten different liquids with a flash point in the range of -6 °C to 234 °C using seven different sprinklers or nozzles. The nozzle height was varied from 3 m to 8 m above the fuel surface. The pool size was varied from 0.4 m2 to 12 m2. Most of the tests were made using a 1.6 m2 circular pool. Temperatures were measured at more than twenty locations both in the plume and in the fuel. Other measurements comprised pressure and flow rate for each nozzle, heat flux to the surroundings, and the weight of the pool. Recordings from each sensor were taken once or twice per second. This report describes the technical details of the experimental arrangement, the direct observations made during the tests, and some direct results of measurements. A more thorough data analysis will be published later.