This process means that water consumption typically is reduced by 6-10 times compared to conventional sprinklers, and the water mist does insignificant damage to engines or hot metal as well as minimum cleaning is required when used in eg passenger cabins, hotels, restaurants etc.
The applications for water mist systems are now expanding from the marine and offshore segments, where it has proven to increase the safety onboard, into segments like tunnels, mobile, computer room and machine protection.
Water as Fire Suppression Agent
Water is probably the most used agent for fire fighting mainly because of its availability and environmentally friendliness. When water evaporates, it starts acting like an inert gas. Although it cannot be considered as an inert gas, one of the characteristics is the displacement of air, which is the fire fighting principle of inert gases. Comparing the technical constellation of water to other fire fighting agents, water is the agent with the highest specific heat capacity and heat of evaporation.
Cooling effect
Because of the high Heat of Evaporation, the absorption of heat from the fire causes a rapid cooling of the fire. This heat absorption capacity, when water mist is transferred into water vapour/steam from 25 ºC is 2500 kJ or approximately 6 times higher than the heat absorption for CO2. Compared to conventional sprinklers where the predominantly cooling effect is reached by boiling the water, the energy required for raising the temperature from 20 ºC to100 ºC for 1 litre of water is 27 kJ.