抄録
Dry chemicals and inert gases are generally used as fire extinguishants to extinguish small-scale flammable fuel fires such as oil spill fires and oil stove fires. But they are not suitable for extinguishing large-scale oil fires, because of the following three reasons ; 1. there is a possibility of reignition after the fire extinction. 2. it costs much when they are applied continuously for a long time. and 3. the largest drawback is that these agents do not prevent the fuel vaporization after the fire extinction.
On the other hand, no fire-fighting foams have such drawbacks. They are sure extinguishants for fires, of chemical plants, large fuel storage tanks and of major oil spills.
Medium and high expansion foams for fire suppression are commercially available as well as convensional low expansion-type foams. Synthetic surfactant, fluorinated surfactant and fluoroprotein foams have been developed one after another, although there are still conventional hydrolized keratin-protein foams available. These newly developed foams have found a way to a practical application in the fire-fighting field.
This paper describes state of the art of fire-fighting foams and explains the details of each foam.
