Experimental study of the effectiveness of sands on extinguishing pool fires based on small sand-throwing equipment

In this paper, diesel, ethanol and n-heptane were used as fuels, sand was used as fire extinguishing material, and massive fire extinguishing experiments were carried out based on a small-scale sand-throwing equipment. A large number of throwing experiments were carried out on the equipment and the throwing performance of the equipment was tested. Based on the throwing experiments, a series of experiments of sand throwing to put out circular pool fire were carried out. Some indicators were measured and analyzed, including flame shape, flame temperature, fire extinguishing time and fire extinguishing mechanism. During the experiment, the flame intensification phenomenon and the " blow-off of flame " phenomenon was found. With the analysis of experimental data, covering the fuel to isolate combustibles and oxygen is considered to be the leading fire extinguishing mechanism of sand throwing to extinguish the pool fire. Sand has good coverage and suffocation performance, and the possibility of re-ignition after fire extinguishing is extremely small. The results of this paper are helpful to understand the experimental phenomenon and mechanism of sand throwing to extinguish pool fire, which provide a reference for the optimization of fire extinguishing performance of the equipment.