Aerosol Suppression System Apply in Wind Turbine

RESEARCH BACKGROUND

Environmental protection and sustainable development have become a global consensus, unclean and heavily polluting industries are gradually being shut down, under this background, clean and renewable wind power generation is rapidly emerging, behind the rapid development of this industry, safety has become and important issue that plagues and hinders the development of this new energy industry.

Recent years, in the safety accidents of wind turbine operation, the proportion of fire accidents is very large, often cause the entire wind turbines to be completely burned, cause huge economic loss.
with the cumulative increase of wind turbine operating time individual system components are gradually worn out and aged, the failure rate will continue to rise, and fire risk will also increase significantly.

Since the year of 2008, there have been more than 40 devastating fire accidents of wind turbine units reported by the media in China, causing a direct economic loss of 500 million yuan, and causing 10 deaths; Sweden makes statistical analysis on the annual operation accidents of 1487 sets of wind turbine engines units, there are 86 lighting accidents, with an annual failure rate of 5.8%; the control system has 3 times, and its annual failure rate is 2.6%; the power system has 25 times, with annual failure rate of 1.7%; the lighting accidents, control system accidents and electrical equipment accidents often lead to fires.

WIND POWER FIRE RESEARCH AND SOLUTION

Fire Characteristics of Wind Turbines

The features of wind turbine fire are as following:

• Not have automatic fire-fighting facilities, can not find the fire early, can not control the fire at its early stage, in case of fire, the loss can not be avoided.
• Most wind turbines are distributed in remote areas or at seaside, The rescue workers could not arrive in time, on-site fire rescue operation can not be able to carry out effectively.
• There are many kinds of combustible objects over there, with high fire load density.
• There are many fire hazards, which are prone to electrical fire, solid surface fire and liquid fire.
• Rapid ventilation and then cause flame spreading rapidly.
• High equipment value and large fire loss, Once a fire occurs, it will cause huge direct and indirect losses.
• It is easy to cause fire in ancillary facilities, and then induce forest fire and grassland fire.
• It is difficult to put out the fire, and the external rescue did not arrive in time, and the falling objects in the fire seriously threaten the personal safety of rescuers.

TYPES AND DISTRIBUTION CHARACTERISTICS OF COMBUSTIBLES

There are many kinds of combustibles used in wind turbine generator rooms, including: kinds of lubricating oil, hydraulic oil, high-pressure hose, ventilation duct, electrical components, wires and cables, paint, sealing materials, thermal insulation and sound-absorbing cotton, nacelle, blade materials etc.

These combustibles are distributed in different parts of the impeller, engine room and tower, and the type and quantity of combustible materials in the nacelle engine room cover are the most, there are also many machines and equipment, dense distribution, the space is narrow, and the fire risk is the highest.

FIRE DESIGN POSITIONING OF WIND TURBINES

There have been below 9 points:

• Meet the requirements of norms: the product conforms to the relevant national and industrial fire-fighting specifications and standards, obtain various certificates and inspection reports.
• Dedicated in the wind turbine, the product conforms to the structure and operation characteristics of the wind turbines, there is no need to arrange the pipe network inside the cabin; the aerosol device is small, easy to install in narrow wind turbines space, and the configuration is very flexible.
• Installation and maintenance- System architecture design is simple, easy to install and use, and easy to operate after-sales maintenance, no need to check the cylinder pressure on regular basis, furthermore, no need to refill the aerosol compound regularly.
• Environmental adaptation- Meet the requirements of the operating environment of the wind turbine under severe conditions, the fire extinguishing device is stored without pressure, good at high and low temperature performance, moisture resistance performance and corrosion resistance performance, EMC performance; This equipment also has reliable protective performance, not affected by lightning or waves.
• High efficiency in fire extinguishing- Suitable for fire class A, B, , E, and have fast speed to suppress fire.
• Automatic operation- Intelligent detection and protection, system automatic control, no personnel are required to guard, also with networking capability.
• Compound detection- The compound detection device can detect the fire in early stage, implement multi-level early warning and fire extinguishing control.
• Aerosol agent performance- it is clean and green product, it is non-toxic, it will not affect the wind turbine equipment and maintenance personnel.
• Multiple start- It has dual starting models of active and passive states, which can be activated under the conditions of without electricity.

WIND TURBINE FIRE SYSTEM STRUCTURE

Total flooding protection for wind turbine engine room: The wind power engine room is an unattended space, because there are many mechanical and electrical equipment, complex structure; the machine operates continuously for a long time, there are many scattered hot spots, therefore, full flooding protection is adopted.

Equip with Minisol brand aerosol fire extinguishers according to the internal volume space, heat detector, smoke detector, thermal activation device, horn&strobe, gas releasing indicator, fire alarm, isolation switch etc; and feedback the working and fire extinguishing status through the gas fire extinguisher controller; when a fire occurs, the fire suppression units will release a lot of aerosol gas, completely submerge the whole wind turbine space, to suppress fire.

There are many facilities in the engine room, there may be obstacles, therefore, we must use aerosol system as total flooding protection solution; aerosol extinguishing gs can cover all corners of the engine room, it can effectively control the fire, aerosol gas forms a long-term immersion in the engine room, effectively reduce the overall temperature of the engine room and prevent secondary fire.

LOCAL FIRE PROTECTION IN ELECTRICAL CABINET

The relevant electrical cabinets in the wind turbine engine room and tower foundation are unattended space, due to the long-term uninterrupted operation of internal electrical equipment, there is potential electrical fire hazard, therefore, local protection in the cabinet is adopted; in this way, the sudden initial fire can be put out in time.

So we suggest to install the temperature sensing thermal cord type aerosol fire extinguishing device, according to the internal space volume, equip with optional mechanical temperature sensing device, which can also be connected to the gas fire extinguishing controller to extinguish the fire.
The system can be started by temperature sensing without electricity.

WIND TURBINE SMART FIRE MANAGEMENT SYSTEM

Wind turbine smart fire management system is normally made up of on-site monitoring equipment, fire detection device, fire suppression units, fire alarm control panel, data network, and control platform etc.

It is intelligent management for sudden fire in wind turbines, realize the function of initial fire detection, intelligent analysis, early intervention control, automatic and efficient fire extinguishing in case of fire emergency, real time network transmission of fire data, early remote intervention control.

It has the characteristics of multi-sensor compound detection, full cycle fire detection, fire monitoring, analysis and early warning, emergency fire fighting, remote dynamic management etc.

In all, aerosol suppression system and its accessories are the ideal solution for wind turbines in new energy industry.

REMARK: Download INSTALLATION MANUAL over there.