Firetrace Fire Suppression
Firetrace is a UK company and Emerald Fire Technology have been supplying Firetrace systems in Ireland for years. Firetrace is a system for simple but effective protection of small enclosures with vital equipment. Ideal applications are protection of MCC panels or security video equipment. A Firetrace System consists of a bottle of exinguishant gas and a thin-walled flexible tube which is passed through or around the equipment to protected. When a fire occurs and touches the tubing the Firetrace Tube wall softens and bursts at the hottest point allowing swift accurate delivery of the extinguishing medium to the source of the fire. Ideal applications: switchgear, skips, bins, post boxes, agricultural machinery, store cupboards, electrical control panels, unmanned closed machinery rooms (yachts and engine compartments), unmanned pumping stations, fume cabinets in laboratories, robotic welding/machining processes, storage for chemicals, and many more.
Firetrace Bottle and Tubing 
Installed in Electrical Cabinet
Principle of Operation: When a fire occurs this tubing, which is pressurised, melts creating a small hole pointing towards the ignition source, thereby releasing the gas. Pressures switches are used to activate a fire alarm system and to shut off the power.
Advantages: The great advantage is the simplicity of installation. The tubing can be ran through several cabinets and the gas will only be released where the fire starts. It's operation is totally mechanical and fail-safe, i.e. it relies on failure to operate it.
Limitations: The direct system is really only suitable for cabinets and other enclosures, as the quantity of gas is relatively small, however Firetrace also have indirect systems where the tubing is used to activate a larger system with distribution pipework and nozzles.Such systems can do large volumes or smaller volumes like fumehoods and wet benches.
Design considerations: The system should be designed so that the quantity of gas to be released will be sufficient to overcome any leakage from an protected space. Where electrical equipment is being proteced it is vital that power be automatically shut off by the system.
Direct or Indirect?: A direct Firetrace system uses the detection tubing as both the detector an the means of delivering the extinguishant. When the tube ruptures due to heat the gas rushes out into the protected enclosure. The Direct/Indirect system (usually a bigger system) uses Firetrace detection tubing to trigger the bottle which then dumps the gas through fixed nozzles. Firetrace bottles can also be activated by standard suppression panels if required, and so could be triggered by smoke or flame detectors.
Firetrace equipment is manufactured by Firetrace Ltd. and more details can be found at their website by clicking on the logo below:
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Why Firetrace?
It is often only after the true cost of a fire in electrical panels becomes apparent that Firetrace is considered. When a critical MCC panel is lost the replacement time could be weeks, meaning production or refrigeration is inoperable for that time, with a major impact in terms of expense and customer relations. Most control panels are built to order, and the older ones are often the most vulnerable and the hardest to replace. Not something you can order online for next-day delivery. If a fire takes hold in an MCC room then not only must the panels be replaced but damaged cables too, which could mean an almost total re-wire of the plant.
It is for this reason that if such a fire occurs in a production facility Firetrace is soon installed in critical panels across the whole organisation. Unfortunately hindsight sells more Firetrace than foresight.
Emerald Fire Technology has provided Firetrace to the following sites, among others:
