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Thursday 17 October 2013

Fire Extinguisher

This is some Information for you! i wanna share it!


 FIRE EXTINGUISH


fire extinguisherflame extinguisher, or simply an extinguisher, is an active fire protectiondevice used to extinguish or control small fires, often in emergency situations. It is not intended for use on an out-of-control fire, such as one which has reached the ceiling, endangers the user (i.e., no escape route, smoke, explosion hazard, etc.), or otherwise requires the expertise of a fire department. Typically, a fire extinguisher consists of a hand-held cylindrical pressure vesselcontaining an agent which can be discharged to extinguish a fire.
In the United States, fire extinguishers, in all buildings other than houses, are generally required to be serviced and inspected by a Fire Protection service company at least annually. Some jurisdictions require more frequent service for fire extinguishers. The servicer places a tag on the extinguisher to indicate the type of service performed (annual inspection, recharge, new fire extinguisher) and when.
There are two main types of fire extinguishers: stored pressure and cartridge-operated. In stored pressure units, the expellant is stored in the same chamber as the firefighting agent itself. Depending on the agent used, different propellants are used. With dry chemical extinguishers,nitrogen is typically used; water and foam extinguishers typically use air. Stored pressure fire extinguishers are the most common type. Cartridge-operated extinguishers contain the expellant gas in a separate cartridge that is punctured prior to discharge, exposing the propellant to the extinguishing agent. This type is not as common, used primarily in areas such as industrial facilities, where they receive higher-than-average use. They have the advantage of simple and prompt recharge, allowing an operator to discharge the extinguisher, recharge it, and return to the fire in a reasonable amount of time. Unlike stored pressure types, these extinguishers use compressed carbon dioxide instead of nitrogen, although nitrogen cartridges are used on low temperature (-60 rated) models. Cartridge operated extinguishers are available in dry chemical and dry powder types in the US and in water, wetting agent, foam, dry chemical (classes ABC and BC), and dry powder (class D) types in the rest of the world.
Fire extinguishers are further divided into handheld and cart-mounted, also called wheeled extinguishers. Handheld extinguishers weigh from 0.5 to 14 kilograms (1 to 30 pounds), and are hence, easily portable by hand. Cart-mounted units typically weigh 23+ kilograms (50+ pounds). These wheeled models are most commonly found at construction sitesairport runwaysheliports, as well as docks and marinas.

According to the standard BS EN 3, fire extinguishers in the United Kingdom as all throughout Europe are red RAL 3000, and a band or circle of a second color covering between 5–10% of the surface area of the extinguisher indicates the contents. Before 1997, the entire body of the fire extinguisher was color coded according to the type of extinguishing agent.
The UK recognizes six fire classes:

  • Class A fires involve organic solids such as paper and wood.
  • Class B fires involve flammable or combustible liquids, including petrol, grease, and oil.
  • Class C fires involve flammable gases.
  • Class D fires involve combustible metals.
  • Class E fires involving electrical appliances (no longer used as when the power supply is turned off an electrical fire can fall into any category).
  • Class F fires involve cooking fat and oil.
 Fire Extinguisher Helps People from Burning Places. Burning places Can Consume one soul of People And Thousands and Hundred Thousands of Buildings . Denpends on whats the Level of the Burning Place. Many burning houses are caused by People's Clumsyness and Carelessness. Burning buildings can be very Fragile and There are Items can be used for emergency fire.
  
Grenade style carbon tetrachloride fire extinguisher                                                                  

Another type of carbon-tetrachloride extinguisher was the Fire grenade. This consisted of a glass sphere filled with CTC, that was intended to be hurled at the base of a fire (early ones used salt-water, but CTC was more effective). Carbon tetrachloride was suitable for liquid and electrical fires and the extinguishers were fitted to motor vehicles. Carbon-tetrachloride extinguishers were withdrawn in the 1950s because of the chemical's toxicity–exposure to high concentrations damages the nervous system and internal organs. Additionally, when used on a fire, the heat can convert CTC to Phosgene gas,[7]formerly used as a chemical
 weapon. 

History

A 1905 illustration marketing extinguishers
The first fire extinguisher of which there is any record was patented in England in 1723 by Ambrose Godfrey, a celebrated chemist at that time and to this day. It consisted of a cask of fire-extinguishing liquid containing a pewter chamber of gunpowder. This was connected with a system of fuses which were ignited, exploding the gunpowder and scattering the solution. This device was probably used to a limited extent, as Bradley's Weekly Messenger for November 7th, 1729, refers to its efficiency in stopping a fire in London.
The modern fire extinguisher was invented by British Captain George William Manby in 1818; it consisted of a copper vessel of 3 gallons (13.6 liters) of pearl ash (potassium carbonate) solution contained within compressed air.

A classic copper building type soda-acid extinguisher
The soda-acid extinguisher was first patented in 1866 by Francois Carlier of France, which mixed a solution of water and sodium bicarbonate with tartaric acid, producing the propellant CO2 gas. A soda-acid extinguisher was patented in the U.S. in 1881 by Almon M. Granger. His extinguisher used the reaction between sodium bicarbonate solution and sulfuric acid to expel pressurized water onto a fire.[1] A vial was suspended in the cylinder containing concentrated sulfuric acid. Depending on the type of extinguisher, the vial of acid could be broken in one of two ways. One used a plunger to break the acid vial, while the second released a lead stopple that held the vial closed. Once the acid was mixed with the bicarbonate solution, carbon dioxide gas was expelled and thereby pressurized the water. The pressurized water was forced from the canister through a nozzle or short length of hose.
The cartridge-operated extinguisher was invented by Read & Campbell of England in 1881, which used water or water-based solutions. They later invented a carbon tetrachloride model called the "Petrolex" which was marketed toward automotive use.[2]

A glass "grenade" style extinguisher, to be thrown into a fire.
The chemical foam extinguisher was invented in 1904 by Aleksandr Loran in Russia, based on his previous invention of fire fighting foam. Loran first used it to extinguish a pan of burning naphtha.[3] It worked and looked similar to the soda-acid type, but the inner parts were slightly different. The main tank contained a solution of sodium bicarbonate in water, whilst the inner container (somewhat larger than the equivalent in a Soda-Acid unit) contained a solution of Aluminium Sulphate. When the solutions were mixed, usually by inverting the unit, the two liquids reacted to create a frothy foam, and carbon dioxide gas. The gas expelled the foam in the form of a jet. Although liquorice-root extracts and similar compounds were used as additives (stabilizing the foam by reinforcing the bubble-walls), there was no "foam compound" in these units. The foam was a combination of the products of the chemical reactions: Sodium and Aluminium salt-gels inflated by the carbon-dioxide. Because of this, the foam was discharged directly from the unit, with no need for an aspirating branchpipe (as in newer foam-compound types).
A Pyrene, brass, carbon-tetrachloride extinguisher
In 1910, The Pyrene Manufacturing Company of Delaware filed a patent for a using carbon tetrachloride (CTC) to extinguish fires.[4] The liquid vaporized and extinguished the flames by inhibiting the chemical chain reaction of the combustion process (it was an early 20th century presupposition that the fire suppression ability of carbon tetrachloride relied on oxygen removal.) In 1911, they patented a small, portable extinguisher that used the chemical.[5] This consisted of abrass or chrome container with an integrated handpump, which was used to expel a jet of liquid towards the fire. It was usually of 1 imperial quart (1.1 L) or 1 imperial pint (0.6 L) capacity but was also available in up to 2 imperial gallon (9 L) size. As the container was unpressurized, it could be refilled after use through a filling plug with a fresh supply of CTC.[6]
Another type of carbon-tetrachloride extinguisher was the Fire grenade. This consisted of a glass sphere filled with CTC, that was intended to be hurled at the base of a fire (early ones used salt-water, but CTC was more effective). Carbon tetrachloride was suitable for liquid and electrical fires and the extinguishers were fitted to motor vehicles. Carbon-tetrachloride extinguishers were withdrawn in the 1950s because of the chemical's toxicity–exposure to high concentrations damages the nervous system and internal organs. Additionally, when used on a fire, the heat can convert CTC to Phosgene gas,[7] formerly used as a chemical weapon.
In the 1940s, Germany invented the liquid chlorobromomethane (CBM) for use in aircraft. It was more effective and slightly less toxic than carbon tetrachloride and was used until 1969. Methyl bromide was discovered as an extinguishing agent in the 1920s and was used extensively in Europe. It is a low-pressure gas that works by inhibiting the chain reaction of the fire and is the most toxic of the vaporizing liquids, used until the 1960s. The vapor and combustion by-products of all vaporizing liquids were highly toxic, and could cause death in confined spaces.

A chemical foam extinguisher with contents.
The carbon dioxide (CO2) extinguisher was invented (at least in the US) by the Walter Kidde Company in 1924 in response to Bell Telephone's request for an electrically non-conductive chemical for extinguishing the previously difficult to extinguish fires in telephone switchboards. It consisted of a tall metal cylinder containing 7.5 lbs. of CO2 with a wheel valve and a woven brass, cotton covered hose, with a composite funnel-like horn as a nozzle. CO2 is still popular today as it is an ozone-friendly clean agent and is used heavily in film and television production to extinguish burning stuntmen.[8] Carbon dioxide extinguishes fire mainly by displacing oxygen. It was once thought that it worked by cooling, although this effect on most fires is negligible. This characteristic is well known and has led to the widespread misuse of carbon dioxide extinguishers to rapidly cool beverages, especially beer.
An early dry chemical extinguisher, the first ones had copper cylinders, this one is steel.
In 1928, DuGas (later bought by ANSUL) came out with a cartridge-operated dry chemical extinguisher, which used sodium bicarbonate specially treated with chemicals to render it free-flowing and moisture-resistant. It consisted of a copper cylinder with an internal CO2cartridge. The operator turned a wheel valve on top to puncture the cartridge and squeezed a lever on the valve at the end of the hose to discharge the chemical. This was the first agent available for large scale three-dimensional liquid and pressurized gas fires, and was but remained largely a specialty type until the 1950s, when small dry chemical units were marketed for home use. ABC dry chemical came over from Europe in the 1950s, with Super-K being invented in the early 60s and Purple-K being developed by the US Navy in the late 1960s.
In the 1970s, Halon 1211 came over to the United States from Europe, where it had been used since the late 40s or early 50s. Halon 1301 had been developed by DuPont and the US Army in 1954. Both 1211 and 1301 work by inhibiting the chain reaction of the fire, and in the case of Halon 1211, cooling class A fuels as well. Halon is still in use today, but is falling out of favor for many uses due to its environmental impact. Europe, and Australia have severely restricted its use, since the Montreal Protocol of 1987. It is however still in use in the United States, the Middle East, and Asia.

Ok Thats it , I hope my Blog would be useful For studies. if this is useful for you Please Recommend it on google.

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