Firefighters work to put out a fire at KT Corp.’s building in the Ahyeon district, central Seoul, on Nov. 24, 2018. (Yonhap)
CHONAN, Nov. 25 (Korea Bizwire) — The Korea Institute of Industrial Technology said Thursday its research team had developed a fire-extinguishing grenade using gas hydrate to help put out fires at hard-to-access sites in a fast and accurate manner.
Gas hydrate is an ice-shaped material that contains gas molecules such as methane within water molecules.
The research team found the principle of extinguishing fires by storing extinguishing gas rather than methane.
In general, gas can be stored by being compressed in a high-pressure container.
However, when it comes to gas hydrate, the hydrogen combination of water molecules serves as a high-pressure container, thereby being able to compress and store extinguishing gas 50 to 100 times larger than its original bulk.
Solid-typed gas hydrate that contains compressed extinguishing gas is highly portable and mobile. Accordingly, it is suitable for hard-to-access fire sites such as mountains and high-rise buildings.
In particular, for fires in high-rise buildings that are beyond the reach of fire-extinguishing water due to limits in pump capacity, the fire extinguishing grenades can be mounted on drones and launched into a fire to extinguish it before it spreads further.
J. S. Shin (js_shin@koreabizwire.com)
