Essay On Fire Extinguisher

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Today we take for granted fire safety. There are rules and regulations to help keep us safe at home, school, work and every public place. Fire extinguishers are one of many health and safety regulations. According to a survey conducted among coworkers and peers, 8 out of 10 people said they own fire extinguishers in their home and have them at their place of work. (Raymond, Sabrina, “Fire Extinguisher Acknowledgment” Survey, July 2017). But what exactly is a fire extinguisher? A fire extinguisher as defined in the Encyclopedia Britannica (September 2014) is a “portable or movable apparatus used to put out small fire by directing onto it a substance that cools the burning material, deprives the flame of oxygen, or interferes with the chemical …show more content…

In 1818 a pressurize cylinder with potassium carbonate was introduced. In 1866 soda-acid was introduced but Francois Carlier. Soda-acid extinguishers were patented in US in 1881 by Almon M. Granger. Both Carlier and Almon both used soda-acid but they used different agents for a chemical reaction. Calier mixed soda-acid with water and tartaric acid, in which doing so created a CO2 gas causing pressure to build and the solution to be released from the cylinder. Granger, used a sulfuric acid and soda-acid to release pressurized water onto the fire. Also in 1881 two Englishmen, Read and Campbell developed an extinguisher geared toward the automotive business called the Petrolex. The Petrolex was a new type of extinguisher, using a CO2 cartridge to expel water based extinguishing agents from a cylinder. In the 1900 more advanced models and the models we know today were produced. The foam extinguisher was first produced by Aleksandr Loran. In the early 1900’s, extinguishing foam, sodium bicarbonate was mixed with aluminum sulfate “usually by inverting the unit” (Bartlett, A., 2017); once combined, carbon dioxide was produced and help to eject the newly formed fire extinguishing agent. Foam units were used to fight flammable liquids, more commonly used in commercial

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