Fire Safety Science Digital Archive

The National Research Council of Canada (NRC) has developed a means of producing Compressed-Air-Foam (CAF) in a fixed pipe system. This system provides superior quality foam with uniform distribution and high momentum. In previous studies, NRC has proven by full-scale tests that CAF has superior fire suppression performance compared to current foam or sprinkler systems. Recently, a study was carried out to develop a CAF distribution system and to evaluate the fire suppression capability of the CAF system for the protection of power transformers. This paper describes the experimental facility, including the power transformer mock-up and instrumentation, and presents experimental results of the fire suppression capability of the CAF system for power transformer protection.