Active fire prevention with OxyReduct®

Is the fire protection solution I chose the right one for the company’s daily needs? This question is one every consultant or operator should ask oneself.

Existing valuables need to be protected reliably. Active fire prevention with oxygen reduction could be the solution.

Oxygen reduction secure archives and document stores

Inside archives and document stores the fire risk is normally low. Books and newspapers for example cannot ignite themselves. But such stores, with densely packed racks of combustibles proving difficult to extinguish. Once alight, fire can quickly spread and cause irreparable damage to what is often priceless material.

Active fire prevention systems employ innovative technology that continuously and carefully controls the oxygen level in a room by adding nitrogen to the air. By doing so the oxygen level is reduced so that most combustibles do not inflame and an open fire is impossible. WAGNER, being technology leader in the field of fire prevention and fire detection, offers a solution named OxyReduct®. With this technology the nitrogen needed for the oxygen reduction is generated from ambient air with different physical processes. The lowered oxygen concentration is thus creating an extremely fire retardant atmosphere. At the same time authorised staff can still enter the protected areas. The effects of lowered oxygen levels on the human body have been highly researched over the years and safety guidelines have been established.

Case Study: Comprehensive fire protection for Great Britain’s written treasures

One of the largest projects in UK where OxyReduct® was implemented is the British Library. It was established in London on 1 July 1973 and is responsible for the safekeeping of more than 150 million items in about 400 different languages. More than seven million items are stored at the Document Storage Centre in Boston Spa, West Yorkshire. To meet the ever-increasing storage requirements, the centre was extended in 2008 with the Additional Storage Program (ASP) and in 2014 with the Newspaper Storage Building (NSB).

British Library and WAGNER, a good liaison

The Additional Storage Program contains more than 100 km of 25m high shelving where about 140,000 bar-coded plastic containers are stored and is split into two storage areas of 35,000 and 50,000 m3. The fire risk is limited to the electrical machinery and equipment inside the storage. OxyReduct® reduces the oxygen content inside the automated high-bay storage to between 14.8-15 vol% by continuously introducing nitrogen to both areas. The nitrogen is generated by a membrane system and distributed through a pipe system.

The newly built Newspaper Storage Building is also protected with OxyReduct®. “After having had a good experience with this system, we again chose WAGNER,” Patrick Dixon, Head of Engineering and Construction British Library, said. The required nitrogen for reducing the oxygen level to 14.8 and 15 vol% is produced directly on-site from the ambient air by generators with the latest Vacuum Pressure Swing Adsorption technology.

The active fire prevention eliminates the risk of fire for both archives as far as possible and provides an effective protection to the written treasures of the United Kingdom.

www.wagner.de