Maximum safety through preventative fire protection
Statistics show that a fire breaks out every two minutes in Germany, frequently causing serious damage. Whether warehouses, data centres or archives, every business needs absolutely reliable fire protection. Companies cannot afford downtime. So when fires occur, apart from protecting people, the most important priority is to maintain business processes.
WAGNER’s product portfolio includes the best fire protection solution to address this challenge: The VdS-approved OxyReduct® fire prevention system. Conventional fire protection systems are passive, meaning that they only react once a fire has broken out. The OxyReduct® preventative oxygen reduction system, on the other hand, actively ensures maximum safety even before fires start. This avoids consequential damage of the type that often occurs when extinguishing with water or other agents, such as foam.
WAGNER’s VdS-approved OxyReduct® fire prevention system makes sure that fires cannot develop in the first place. By feeding a controlled supply of nitrogen into the protected area, it keeps oxygen concentration levels consistently below the ignition threshold of the combustible materials inside. The result: far less risk of open fire.
Prevent fires actively before they start
Functional principle
Three components are necessary for fires to develop: oxygen, heat energy and fuel. If one of these three components is taken away, there is no way a fire can break out. OxyReduct® is based on this principle. By reducing the oxygen content of the air, it literally “takes the fire’s breath away”.
Dr. Oetker, London (Canada): new fire prevention system for the Canadian market
One of the biggest challenges was observing the local guidelines so as to provide the Safety Authority inspectors and the customer with a functioning and standard-compliant system. The result was the approval of the first OxyReduct® system within the North American market!
Dipl.-Ing. (FH) Lena Niederstuke, WAGNER Project Engineer
NewCold Germany Rheine GmbH (Germany): Fully automated deep-freeze high-bay warehouse with comprehensive fire protection concept
Even in the early stages of the planning process, we knew that [...] our business processes and our warehouse’s automatic logistics processes needed to be maintained no matter what.
Frank Huckschlag, Executive VP Global Operations, NewCold
KERN & SOHN GmbH, Balingen (Germany): Cutting-edge fire prevention technology for Southern German developers and manufacturers of precision scales
The goods are precious and actually being ready to ship them is even more valuable to us. That’s why we’ve invested in good fire protection, in the form of fire prevention.
Albert Sauter, Managing Director, KERN & SOHN GmbH
Buildings 30 metres or more in height, product flows centralised within gigantic logistics centres, and investment-heavy intra-logistics systems: from a fire-engineering point of view, this combination results in a great deal of fire risk, and any serious situations will be nearly impossible to get under control using conventional extinguishing systems. This is why WAGNER developed OxyReduct® active fire prevention, as an economic system of preventative fire protection for sensitive areas with high asset concentrations.
Extensive automation and high, densely packed storage racks with narrow spaces between them help maximise efficient utilisation of warehouse capacity—and also facilitate the development and spread of fire. Extinguishing with foam or water is difficult in such situations, and also results in additional damage. When fires occur, the special polypropylene small load carriers behave like flammable liquids. OxyReduct® can help actively reduce the risk of fires developing.
Changes in consumer behaviour have increased the need for frozen foods or convenience products, such as fish, meat, vegetables and baked goods. Requirements on the deep-freeze logistics process chain have increased accordingly. Should a fire break out in a cold storage facility, even the smallest amount of smoke contamination can damage food and endanger delivery capabilities. Extinguishing water with added antifreeze would render food equally unfit for consumption. The OxyReduct® oxygen reduction system effectively prevents fires from developing, and in these naturally sealed storage facilities, they can establish and maintain protective atmospheres in a very energy efficient way, while ensuring that employees can still access the protected area freely.
In hazardous materials warehouses, safety poses major challenges for both operators and fire protection officers. The stored goods are flammable and may be extremely prone to combustion. In such situations, the most successful fire protection concepts are those that minimise risk from the outset, such as WAGNER’s oxygen reduction systems with CO2 flood extinguishers.
Demand for lithium-ion batteries within the automotive industry has practically exploded. Battery formation and ageing represent the greatest fire hazards in production. When lithium-ion batteries are used outside of their specifications, mechanical, electrical and thermal effects can all make them potentially dangerous. For example, heat can cause a battery to burst, and the escaping electrolytes can catch fire, causing an explosion that ignites other batteries nearby and creating a chain reaction. Sprinkler systems are problematic in such facilities, both because batteries are packed so densely within the warehouse and because water is highly conductive. WAGNER has demonstrated in numerous fire experiments that protective oxygen-reduced environments can prevent a burgeoning battery fire from spreading.
Data centres
Smoke and fire fundamentally disrupt data centre availability, so operators often rely upon redundant systems to ensure the uninterrupted process availability that is so crucial for such operations. The right WAGNER fire protection concept, such as OxyReduct® with quick-release, can combine free accessibility, basic preventative fire protection, and rapid incident response. Data centres’ high energy density also means increased risk of fire—and even an undetected smouldering fire can be enough to create a serious situation.
Museums, libraries and archives house priceless works of art, cultural heritage items and one-of-a-kind documents. Protecting these unique and irreplaceable items requires a comprehensive fire protection concept, because even the smallest quantities of smoke, fire, or extinguishing agent residue would destroy these valuable objects. OxyReduct® systems provide active, preventative fire protection for these collections.