Fire breakouts are one of the most dreaded things that could happen. It has the potential of destroying property, lives, and livelihoods. Thus, many of the commercial buildings in Singapore are equipped with automatic fire suppression systems which include a wide range of devices such as kitchen hood fire suppression systems, fire suppression systems by Carbon Dioxide (gaseous fire suppression), condensed aerosol fire suppression and the ubiquitous fire sprinklers. All of these devices can work without any kind of human intervention and can extinguish a fire during its early the early stages. They work to minimise the loss of human lives and property damage.

Fire causes greater damage when it progresses from one section to another or one floor of the building to another without any resistance. Even though water can douse flames quickly, it can cause greater damage to the property, documents, furniture, and electronics housed inside the building than the fire itself! This might sound a bit surprising but it’s true that water used to extinguish a fire can lead to huge losses. However, in some areas of a building, an advanced fire suppression system with clean gas, can be used, which will be able to extinguish a fire with minimum damage to the building.

Fire Suppression System with Clean Gas
As mentioned earlier, water is still widely used for extinguishing fires but its use as a fire suppressant has severe limitations. Water causes a lot of damage to the things that it was actually supposed to protect by drenching them when putting out the fire. Fire suppression systems with carbon dioxide are categorised as clean agent systems, essentially implying that it is waterless. Using such a fire suppression system with doesn’t leave any kind of residue or excess water that can damage irreplaceable assets.

The clean agent fire suppression system is appropriate for commercial buildings because it uses a gaseous agent, like CO2, which saves valuable goods from damage. One important thing to note is that water often fails to diffuse chemical fires. However, gaseous fire suppression systems are highly effective in dealing with chemical fires and can quickly put them out.

How fire suppression system with clean gas works?
The clean agent is stored in cylinders, which are housed away from the building where the fire suppression system is physically installed. Now, pipelines from the cylinders are spread all the way to the different floors and rooms within the building. Upon detecting fire or heat, an electrical signal is sent to the control unit which releases the gas through the pipeline. The gas is released into every room from nozzles fitted to the pipeline and the fire is diffused before it can cause any damage. There are some advanced systems that only release gas in the section where the fire is detected. The time lapse between detection to the release of gas is less than 10 seconds!

Nowadays, low-pressure carbon dioxide fire suppression systems and also widely used as it is a much safer system than the high-pressure systems. In addition, low-pressure CO2 system also saves space and maintenance. Thus, making it a very attractive product to be used.