[AusNOG] Hypoxic Fire Suppression [was Global Switch]

Mon Jan 13 21:35:02 EST 2014

Great article. I know some people at ARA group and can try and organise a
site visit if anyone is interested in coming along?

The hypoxic systems are designed to operate continuously to scrub oxygen
from the air for the main reason that fresh air and other ingress air will
always enter the room. The hypoxic system is henced sized to cater for the
amount if fresh air that is anticipated.

Regards

Tony de Francesco
Technical Director
P.U.E. Pty Ltd
Mob: +61 (0) 457 701 179
Email: tonyd at pue.com.au
On 13/01/2014 9:21 PM, "Matt Perkins" <matt at spectrum.com.au> wrote:

>  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
> On 13/01/2014 8:13 PM, "Matt Perkins" <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>
>>
>> > 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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