Warehouse Protection

The approach to fire protection for onsite warehouses should be influenced by a number of factors, some of which may be overlooked in reaching a decision on whether or not to provide fixed fire protection and, if so, to what extent. 

Without dependable fixed fire protection, fire mitigation will rely only upon compartmenting and spatial separation to limit the magnitude of the fire. Table 8-18 summarizes these points. 

Further guidance on fire protection of warehouses and their contents can be found in the book Guidelines for Safe Warehousing of Chemicals (CCPS, 1998). 

Open frame steel rack storage arrays allow for greater exposed surface area of the product and greater pile stability during a fire than solid pile and palletized storage arrays. For these reasons, rack storage arrays result in more severe fires than other types of storage arrays under similar conditions. 

In-rack sprinklers can result in smaller more easily controlled, suppressed, or extinguished fires, with fewer operation sprinklers. This can have the added benefits of reduced quantity of contaminated water runoff and reduced product damage. 

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The formulation is non-toxic, non-hazardous, and biodegradable (5 Z > D so that it may be safely used in situations where an adverse contaminant might have a large environmental impact. It has also been successfully used in three-dimensional fires, such as warehouse protection and airplane hanger systems, and as a spill fume suppressant on hydrocarbons and on oleum ( ). 

Protection of Warehouses Against Fire, Loss Prevention Bulletin 084, IChemE, 1989, pp. 2-6. 

Chemical plants also consist of process buildings, storage and warehouse buildings, control houses, laboratories, and general offices. Depending on tlie nature of activity and tlie quality of the contents, tlie structural requirements and protection features will vary. Building standards are defined by the National Code of the American Insurance Association. 

Resin solution penetrating sealers are now available which, for very large warehouse floors, are comparable in applied costs with the concrete surface hardeners and are now being increasingly specified. Experience indicates that certain acrylic resin solutions are proving more durable and offer better protection to chemical and oil spillage than concrete surface hardeners. Acrylic resin solution sealers can markedly improve the abrasion resistance of concrete floors and have rescued a number of poor-quality floors. 

Design to protect a large warehouse containing plastic materials that can emit ethylene and propylene vapors. The dimensions on the rectangular building with a flat roof are ... 

A Type 1 enclosure serves as a protection against dust and light indirect splashing, but is not dust tight. Typical applications are office buildings, warehouses, etc. 

All responsible organizations will have a fire protection program to protect their assets. For some, it may be fire extinguishers in the warehouse while for others it is a department of professionals supplementing numerous automatic fire detection and suppression systems. Due to the nature of the program, it is often necessary to involve several individuals, each having a specific, assigned responsibility. 

Incremental increases in the amount of combustibles can eventually render the existing fire protection systems inadequate. A more subtle change is the gradual replacement of metal parts in a warehouse with plastic ones of the same size and shape. 

Manual fire suppression is not normally dependable as a primary fire protection strategy for chemical storage warehouses. Fires may grow to uncontrollable size before effective manual response can be employed, and may pose severe risks to firefighters. In warehouses, manual suppression usually involves far more water application than automatic systems, aggravating problems of disposal of fire water runoff. 

When products are stored in warehouses for long periods, the foam packaging must not creep by more than about 10%, or the impact protection will... 

A diesel fuel stabilizer containing a blend of amines, polyamines, and alkyl ammonium alkyl phosphate as specified under MIL-S-53021 is recommended for federal diesel fuel oil. This stabilizer is to be used at a treat rate of 25 lb/1,000 barrels. It is not intended for use in routine applications, but for situations where increased stability protection is required. Typical applications include fueled equipment undergoing long-term storage in a warehouse or depot, prepositioned equipment or equipment maintained in a high-temperature environment. 

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