RIYADH-based Al Sayed and Sons Company has opted to protect its business-critical archives, electrical cabinets and computer servers with a total of 53 Firetrace automatic fire detection and suppression systems from the US-headquartered Firetrace International, as part of an integrated fire protection installation.

The decision was taken after discounting the total room flooding option in this instance as, particularly when considering the protection of the electrical cabinets and computer servers, any fire would be within an enclosure and so be more effectively and economically protected using an in-cabinet or “micro-enclosure” fire protection system.

Firetrace is designed specifically to protect this type of environment. “It is intrinsically safe and provides round-the-clock and unsupervised protection that requires neither electricity nor external power,” says a spokesman for the company. “It comprises a cylinder containing the extinguishing agent that is attached to a specially developed leak-resistant polymer tubing. This proprietary Firetrace Detection Tubing is a flexible, linear pneumatic heat and flame detector that is routed throughout the electrical cabinets, the computer servers and archive records.

“As soon as a fire is detected, the tubing ruptures at the point where the heat is detected, automatically triggering the release of the suppression agent – in this instance 3M Novec1230 Fire Protection Fluid – and putting out the fire in less than 10 seconds.”

Explaining why Novec 1230 was chosen, Husam Sinjab of specialist fire protection company Husam Sinjab Contracting, says: “Novec 1230 was chosen for several reasons. It is a clean suppressant agent that leaves no residue after discharge and does not damage any sensitive electronic equipment or hard-copy records in the archives.”

“Novec 1230 is also completely safe for discharge in occupied areas, which is important as the archives are in regular use and so could be occupied when a fire breaks out,” he adds.

The Al Sayed and Sons Company project is typical of the more than 150,000 successful Firetrace installations around the world, where there has not been a single instance of where the Firetrace system has either sounded a false alarm or failed to detect and suppress a genuine fire, the spokesman claims. “In fact, ISO 9001:2008-certified Firetrace International’s Firetrace is the only UL (Underwriters Laboratories) listed and FM (Factory Mutual) approved tube-operated system in the world that is tested as an automatic fire detection and suppression system,” he points out.

Firetrace International is headquartered in Scottsdale, Arizona, with its Emea (Europe, the Middle East and Africa) offices in Gatwick, the UK. Firetrace is available only via Firetrace International’s global network of authorised distributors. These trading partners are skilled in hazard analysis, agent and system selection, installation, commissioning and support. They also use only genuine Firetrace components.