[Nhcoll-l] Sprinklers in wet collections

[Monaghan, Nigel]

Gali

We have spent some time designing a purpose-built spirit collection facility (still waiting for funds to build it). We are not pursuing water sprinklers in the zone where collections of jars are held. This is because there is a risk of spreading an alcohol based fire by adding water to the equation. Our approach is to keep the collections at low temperature (12 Celsius) to avoid evaporation from collections in storage or from spillages – that keeps the risk of fire from alcohol vapour to a minimum. We have sprinklers outside the area where the collections are stored to prevent risk of fire spreading into the collections area. Fire suppression in areas including collections stored in alcohol can be met best by inert gas systems which work by removing oxygen from the fire equation. They also remove oxygen from people so need to be well designed with safety systems to ensure people have vacated the area before they go off – a good example is the underground spirit facility in Paris. Several alcohol collections stores visited during our research focus much more on fire prevention than localised suppression. In Europe we have directives on storage of flammable liquids that dictate much of what our engineers try to achieve.

Nigel


Mr Nigel T. Monaghan,
Keeper,
Natural History Division,
National Museum of Ireland,
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From: nhcoll-l-bounces at mailman.yale.edu [mailto:nhcoll-l-bounces at mailman.yale.edu] On Behalf Of Gali Beiner
Sent: 10 May 2012 07:06
To: nhcoll-l at mailman.yale.edu
Subject: [Nhcoll-l] Sprinklers in wet collections

Dear Colleagues,

We are currently dealing with a proposal to install water sprinklers in our wet collection storage facilities as part of the general fire hazard measures. It will be very helpful to know what kind of fire-extinguishing measures have been installed in other facilities holding jars and containers with alcohol / formalin / other preservative fluids. Were there any particular considerations your institute took into accound, given that preservation fluids tend to be so flammable?

Many thanks for your thoughts on this subject,

Gali Beiner (ACR)
Conservator, Palaeontology Lab
National Natural History Collections
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Berman Building, Edmond J. Safra campus, Givat Ram
Jerusalem 91904, Israel
Fax. 972-2-6584741
galib at savion.huji.ac.il<mailto:galib at savion.huji.ac.il>

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