Nozzles for fire protection systems

Spray nozzles have a number of fire protection applications.

Fire extinguishing

The most obvious application of nozzles is to deliver sufficient water, foam or other fire-retardant liquid to the area in which fire has broken out in an attempt to put out the fire.  This can be achieved by either drenching the fire with large volumes of fluid or, more subtly, by spraying very fine mists which are rapidly evaporated displacing oxygen and suffocating the fire.  These two different approaches require very different nozzles.  Typically specialist spiral nozzles will be used for the drench type systems and misting nozzles for the fog type applications.

   

Fire prevention

In certain situations nozzles can be used to reduce the risk of a fire starting in the first place.  Typically these will provide a low level of wetting to the area to raise the ignition point of the area.  More subtly nozzles can also be used to increase air moisture to reduce the risk of static build up in some areas where sparking might pose a fire risk or can be used to reduce the level of dust in an area which might pose a fire or explosion risk.

Asset protection

In certain situations nozzles will be used to protect key assets from the effects of a fire but make no attempt to actually extinguish the fire.  These assets may very well be gas tanks that might pose an explosion risk if heated.  Alternatively the nozzles may be used to provide a 'water corridor' giving safe route out of an area for any people trapped in a fire zone.  The nozzles required for these applications will be relatively high throughput and typically with a more directed cone of spray than say fire extinguishing nozzles.