Kitchen fire extinguisher
The kitchen is a very likely place where a fire can start at home. This is due to the direct fires and the high power electrical appliances involved in a kitchen. This makes the kitchen a high risk area in a home as far as fires are concerned. Therefore it is essential that you are able to quickly and efficiently extinguish kitchen fires through a kitchen fire extinguisher.
As a kitchen fire extinguisher, a wet chemical fire extinguisher works best. This is because traditional methods like water fire extinguishers will not work in kitchen fires that can easily spread by using cooking and vegetable oils and other flammable substances to spread. Similarly, dry powder type fire extinguishers do not work well with vegetables oils as the powder sinks into the oil and can re-flash, thereby making the fire even more serious. In addition, paper, wood, etc. may add fuel to the fire and thus kitchen fires are generally complex in nature. A kitchen fire extinguisher should be able to tackle all these different classes of fires which are likely to occur in a kitchen. A wet chemical fire extinguisher is a new type of extinguisher that is especially suited for this purpose.
A wet chemical fire extinguisher is ideally suited as a kitchen fire extinguisher due to a variety of properties. For example, the wet chemical fire extinguisher has a slow and steady action rather than putting off fires rapidly. Thus this type of fire extinguisher can be used with more complex fires that are otherwise quick to spread. This is especially the case with oils, since they can get explosive if tried to be put off instantly.
The chemicals generally used in a wet chemical fire extinguisher, used as a kitchen fire extinguish are –
- Potassium acetate
- Potassium carbonate
- Potassium citrate
It is always better to avoid kitchen fires through careful cooking practices and knowing about the flash point of various oils used during cooking. However, a kitchen fire extinguisher should come in handy during any emergency fire in the kitchen and is therefore a great tool to have in the kitchen during such emergencies.
