Application of water@silica core-shell particles for suppressing gasoline pool fires

- A new type of fire suppressants with water@silica core-shell structures was fabricated as through a simple stirring method.
- The capsular particles showed excellent performance in extinguishing gasoline pool fires in terms of time and agent mass.
- The work presented a novel route to produce small sized water droplets and store them without coalescence for long time.

A new type of dry powders with capsular structure was fabricated for fire suppression, in which the content of water approached 60%. The capsules with the size of 3-5 μm consisted of liquid core and solid shell, where the core was water droplet and the shell was assembled silicon dioxide particles with surface hydrophobic modification. The shell of close-packed silica particles surrounding each water droplet provided the structural rigidity of the capsules and enabled their application as powder fire suppressants. Two different scaled real fire tests showed that thus-prepared solid powders could extinguish 0.21 MW gasoline pool fire in 2.0 s with agent mass of 0.055 kg, and 1.0 MW gasoline pool fire in 5.0 s with agent mass of 0.49 kg. Such fire extinguishing performance greatly outperformed the conventional monoammonium phosphate (ABC) powders, neat silica powders and water mist, with significantly reduced fire extinguishing time and mass of agent consumed. Mechanism of the core-shell particles in fire suppression was discussed based on established theories and experimental results.