[AusNOG] Hypoxic Fire Suppression [was Global Switch]

[Matt Perkins]

These guys seem to have installed a Hypoxic system recently. Would there 
environment be small enough to meet the fresh air ingress requirements 
or would the system just be running all the time in a battle between the 
fresh air and putting converting it with nitrogen.

http://aragroupblog.com.au/?p=2420




On 13/01/14 8:54 PM, Tony de Francesco wrote:
>
> Just to clarify the australian BCA requirements: all habitable spaces 
> including machine rooms, switchrooms, etc. must be provided with fresh 
> outside air. The levels required are stipulated in AS1668 but 
> typically work out at around 1 l/s per m2 for most data centre spaces.
>
> Hospital operating theatres are actually provided with 100% outside 
> air via HEPA filtration with surrounding service corridors kept at 
> approx -ve 20Pa pressure to ensure that no "dirty" air enters the theatre.
>
> Even if it was not a BCA requirement there is a need for fresh outside 
> air in a data centre keep ot at a higher pressure than surround areas 
> to ensure that "dirty" air does not enter the technical space.
>
> Regards
>
> Tony de Francesco
> Technical Director
> P.U.E. Pty Ltd
> Mob: +61 (0) 457 701 179
> Email: tonyd at pue.com.au <mailto:tonyd at pue.com.au>
>
> On 13/01/2014 8:13 PM, "Matt Perkins" <matt at spectrum.com.au 
> <mailto:matt at spectrum.com.au>> wrote:
>
>     That's good info Bevan,
>     I wonder if the building code requires that fresh air be injected
>     into the entire building or all rooms within the building. I
>     wonder if Hypoxic fire prevention could be employed in small
>     computer room type environments or data centers where division
>     into smaller rooms or where cold/hot aisle for example. I guess
>     not useful information for centers with large floor plates but may
>     be useful in power room environments or small server rooms etc. 
>     If the building code allows.
>
>     Operating theaters for example dont have fresh air injected into
>     them. It's a highly filtered air that's injected from the outer
>     rooms surrounding the theater through HEPA and active charcoal. 
>     What counts as fresh air.
>
>     These guys make an interesting device.
>     http://altitudetraining.com/prevenex/products/airunit
>
>     Matt.
>
>
>        On 13/01/14 7:07 PM, Bevan Slattery wrote:
>>
>>
>>     From: Tony de Francesco <tonyd at pue.com.au <mailto:tonyd at pue.com.au>>
>>
>>     > Yes but Inergen is not used in large DCs because of the volume required.
>>
>>     Simply not correct.  Most large DC’s segregate spaces to allow
>>     full discharge in a specific area.
>>
>>     > The European system is a hypoxic system at low pressure. Very different to dumping a whole bunch
>>     of gas through high pressure nozzles.
>>
>>     Challenge with this system in Australia (which I looked at early
>>     in NEXTDC days) was that in Australia you need to continually
>>     supply fresh air to a DC under the building code.  It is
>>     difficult to continually deliver a hypoxic environment across a
>>     large facility considering the Australian standards and the need
>>     to continually extract O2/Inject N2 into the air supply.
>>
>>     Hypoxic systems are typically used in things like ship engine
>>     rooms to reduce the risk of catastrophic fire or in environments
>>     with low traffic flow (archives).  In a colocation environment in
>>     Australia I couldn’t get an insurer to get their head around
>>     having staff and customers in a facility with a reduced O2, let
>>     alone the technical issues around a requirement to continually
>>     alter the air mix due to the building code.
>>
>>     So if you want to maintain a lower level of O2 you had to operate
>>     the Agent Generator (essentially lower O2 in a bottle) 24/7 to
>>     maintain the O2 levels at the Fire Type 2 levels.  The amount of
>>     fresh air required in a 20,000m facility that had a volumetric
>>     size of 100 megalitres is “significant”.  Very significant.
>>
>>     All in all it wasn’t technically or commercially viable for
>>     NEXTDC at the time to provide a continuous hypoxic environment.
>>      This may have changed.  There was some investigation into using
>>     an agent generator to create the refill in case of discharge
>>     removing the need for a refill from alternate gas suppliers.  But
>>     the equipment needed to refill 20 megalitres (hall discharge +1)
>>     was significant and the bottles required was considerably greater
>>     from memory.  Also not all gas discharge systems are as high
>>     pressure these days so you may want to check out the latest to
>>     ensure your points are valid.
>>
>>     Cheers
>>
>>     [b]
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
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