Fire Supression Systems

Fire suppression systems work by suppressing the fire and thereby preventing it from spreading or reigniting. When a fire is suppressed, it gives ample time and opportunity for people to intervene and extinguish this fire. When a fire is suppressed, it is much easier to extinguish it, and therefore fire suppression systems enable quick and early fire extinguishing. It should be noted that fire suppression systems are quite different from fire extinguishing systems and these two should not be confused.
One of the most common areas where fire suppression systems are used are data centers and computer rooms with data storage. This is because these areas are susceptible to fires due to short circuit or other reasons and a fire in such sensitive areas can cause huge damage to data. In addition, such fires are easy to spread and can cause a lot of damage. With the number of computer companies and data storage units rapidly increasing, fire suppression systems are becoming increasingly common and their role is becoming increasingly pivotal in preventing huge fire accidents. With the help of fire suppression systems, fires are prevented from spreading rapidly and are kept under control until extinguished.

Most fire suppression systems work in either of these two ways –

• Cutting off oxygen supply to the fire by using inert gases like argon, nitrogen, carbon dioxide, etc. or a mixture of these gases.
• Reducing the heat in the area of the fire by using synthetic chemicals for heat absorption. This way the fire doesn’t spread easily and cannot reignite due to reduced temperatures.

More modern and advanced systems work using a combination of these two operating principles to improve efficiency in suppressing fires. It is important to note that while water sprinkler systems can be used for structural fires, these can have catastrophic consequences inside a computer data center and should be avoided. Fire suppression systems therefore give a good alternative to using water sprinklers insider such data centers. Such fire suppression systems therefore become critical to saving data inside these data centers as a fire in such a case can cause huge irreparable damage.