ASK - Passive Fire Protection

[mrunix]

Dear All,

Does anyone have experiences in dealing with Passive Fire Protection? How do you determine the need of PFP compare to the cost & benefit of the PFP?

[ibnu.zaenal]

The principle of fire protection is not just apply one of fire protection method, like as Passive Fire protection. Passive fire protection methods basically avoid potential fire occur to the facility or reduce incident spread to other facility so its need a large land use and sometimes need a lot of cost and investment. Active fire protection principle is used for fire identification and suppresion so it take modern technology than passive fire protection

[f81aa]

POTENTIAL PROCESS SAFETY SYSTEMS DESIGN SOLUTIONS

Safety system designs fall into one of four categories:
Inherently safer
Passive
Active
Procedural

I´ll comment on the passive and active design solutions.

Passive design solutions do not require any device to sense and/or actively respond to a process variable and have very reliable mechanical design. Examples of passive design solutions include:
• Using incompatible hose couplings, nonsplash filling using permanently installed dip-pipes, permanent grounding and bonding via continuous metal equipment and pipe rather than with removable cables
• Designing high pressure equipment to contain overpressure hazards such as internal deflagration
• Containing hazardous inventories with a dike that has a bottom sloped to a remote impounding area, which is designed to minimize surface area

Active design solutions require devices to monitor a process variable and function to mitigate a hazard.
Frequently active solutions involve a considerable maintenance and procedural component and are therefore typically less reliable than inherently safer or passive solutions. To achieve necessary reliability, redundancy is often used to eliminate conflict between production and safety requirements (such as having to shut down a unit to maintain a relief valve).
Active solutions are sometimes referred to as engineering controls. Examples of active solutions include:
• Using a pressure safety valve or rupture disk to prevent vessel overpressure
• Interlocking a high level sensing device to a vessel inlet valve and pump motor to prevent liquid overfill of the vessel
• Installing check valves

I agree with your assertion that one has to use more than one fire protection method; however, I had the impression that the reader may get the idea that passive fire protection is just the reduction of incident spread to other facilities by generous spacing with its associated higher investment. Passive fire protection is more than generous spacing. It also encompass:
Layout
Fireproofing
Containment and Drainage
Electrical Area Classification
Ventilation/Exhaust
Static Electricity, Lightning, and Stray Current Protection

On the other hand, examples of active fire protection are:
Water Supply
Fire Water Demand
Water Distribution
Fire Water Pumps
Detection and Alarm
Gas Sensing Detectors
Sprinklers
Water Spray Systems
Water Mist Systems
Foam Systems
Foam–Water Deluge and Water Spray Systems
Clean Agents
Carbon Dioxide Systems
Dry Chemical
Steam Snuffing
Portable Fire Suppression Equipment

Usually we don´t have a magic solution that solves everything and as you said, we need more than one fire protection method. Everything has a cost, advantages, disadvantages and applications.

Regards

The principle of fire protection is not just apply one of fire protection method, like as Passive Fire protection. Passive fire protection methods basically avoid potential fire occur to the facility or reduce incident spread to other facility so its need a large land use and sometimes need a lot of cost and investment. Active fire protection principle is used for fire identification and suppresion so it take modern technology than passive fire protection

[ibnu.zaenal]

Yes you're right, I just give short description about the different of passive and active protection not detail as text book. thanks for completing the explanation