Mission Critical Fire Protection Systems

The Problem for Mission Critical Facilities

In telecommunications, Internet service or other critical mission applications, failure is simply not an option. You must be on-line and performing every minute of every day, 365 days a year.

Needless to say, fire in a mission critical facility is simply unacceptable. And if fire occurs, it must be detected and suppressed before downtime can occur.

Yet the amazing fact is that most fires resulting in large scale loses are actually detected by people (see graphic at left)!

And the statistics for a company suffering business interruption are not encouraging. 43% of such companies never resume operations, and of those that do, 28% fail within three years. In a mission critical business, going off line can mean going out of business.

Early Fire Detection Can Prevent Problems in Mission Critical Facilities

Mission critical facilities cannot afford to rely on conventional spot type smoke detectors to detect fire in early stages of combustion. They simply react too slowly. You need rapid detection before smoke is visible. The solution is air sampling detectors.

Unlike conventional smoke detectors that passively wait for smoke to reach them, air sampling type fire detection systems continuously draws air from the protected area through a piping network to the detection chamber. As electrical or electronic wire begins to overheat, it releases specific materials as the temperature increases. The air sampling system is designed to detect the plasticizers commonly released from PVC wire in the very early phases of heat build up.

In the Analaser air sampling system from Fenwal, a laser beam bounces light off small particles released by the combusting materials in the protected area. A particle discriminator rejects reflections off those particles not associated with fire decomposition.

This technology creates a high sensitivity smoke detection system up to 1,000 times more sensitive than conventional ionization or photoelectric type smoke detectors. The system will detect overheat byproducts of combustion in concentration as low as 0.003% obscuration per foot.

Putting The Fire Out Without Water Damage To Equipment

A mission critical facility doesn't have the luxury of time to extinguish fire with a water sprinkler system. While sprinklers are extremely effective, an unacceptably long time is required to disassemble, dry, and clean the drenched equipment of water, silt, and dissolved salts. In a world operating 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, even a one or two day downtime is unacceptable. Mission critical facilities must detect and suppress fire before building fire sprinklers are activated. In this way costly downtime can be completely avoided.

Two non-water based fire suppression systems are particularly suited for this task.

FM200 systems deploy a nontoxic, non-residue producing, non-oxygen depleting three dimensional fire suppressant gas into the protected area. Fire suppression is immediate. There is no clean up required because the FM200 gas doesn't leave a residue. Used in asthmatic inhalers as a propellant, FM200 is completely nontoxic.

Inergen systems deploy a nontoxic, non-residue producing gas into the affected area and extinguish fire by reducing the oxygen level below the level necessary to support combustion. Since this level is safe for human occupancy, there is no threat to people. Neither is there residue from the discharge, so cleanup after the discharge is unnecessary.

Putting It All Together

Fireline Corporation will assist you in the engineering, planning, installation, testing and maintenance of mission critical fire protection systems to protect your essential operations. We offer special design aids to architects and engineers charged with the design of detection and suppression systems.

Contact us by e-mail or phone for additional information or assistance for your fire protection system requirements.