Research and development of new fire fighting clothing - YULONG SAFETY

Research and development of new fire fighting clothing

2020-11-28

With the increasing severity and complexity of the current fire situation, as firefighters active on the front line of fire fighting, they are threatened by high temperatures such as flames, thermal radiation, and thermal convection at any time. Firefighters burn or sacrifice time from time to time. According to statistics, from 2005 to 2013, 75 firefighters were sacrificed and 144 were injured in fire fighting and rescue operations. Among them, burns accounted for 6% and burns accounted for 20%. A researcher surveyed 1171 firefighters in 25 provinces across the country and found that 21% of firefighters were burned during fire fighting. In order to meet the thermal protection performance requirements of fire sites and protect firefighters from high temperature, the active fire-fighting protective clothing (hereinafter referred to as fire-fighting clothing) that uses aramid fiber as the thermal insulation layer has the problem of being too heavy.
A few days ago, with the research progress of fire-fighting clothing heat insulation materials at home and abroad, a feasibility analysis of using new aerogel materials to replace active aramid fibers as the heat-insulating layer of fire-fighting clothing was proposed, which provided a theoretical reference for the development of new fire-fighting clothing. Aerogel is a porous nanometer highly dispersed material with a continuous three-dimensional grid structure, and 99% of its composition is gas. Since the light of the courseware is scattered after passing through the aerogel, just like sunlight passing through the air, the aerogel presents a blue smoke shape, which is academically called "solid smoke" or "blue smoke." At the same time, due to its ultra-low density, aerogel is also known as the smallest solid substance in the world.
In the early days, due to the air pressure of aerogels, poor flexural resistance, fragility and difficulty in flexible processing, aerogels have always been out of touch with the field of clothing. It was not until the company established by the National Space Administration that combined aerogels into flexible fibers through toughening modification technologies that developed aerogel flexible materials that are easy to process and shape. The space suit using this flexible aerogel as a thermal insulation material can withstand the ultra-low temperature of minus 130 degrees Celsius when the thickness of the aerogel is 18mm. For civilian use, the Italian clothing company first produced winter tops with aerogel as the insulation medium. At present, the application of aerogel materials in clothing is mainly for low-temperature thermal insulation functions, but the current market is still blank for the research and application of thermal insulation protection in environments such as high temperatures at fire sites.
In summary, the thicker the thermal insulation layer of the fire-fighting clothing, the better the thermal protection, but the heavy fire-fighting clothing will inevitably cause heat stress to the firefighters in the fire environment. Aerogel is a super thermal insulation material due to its ultra-low density and thermal conductivity. The overall thermal conductivity of firefighting suits using aerogel as the thermal insulation layer is only 1/4 of that of active firefighting suits, and the weight is only 1/3 of that of active firefighting suits. Therefore, it reduces the impact of heat stress and improves the efficiency of firefighters From the perspective of thermal comfort, we need to vigorously develop fire-fighting clothing using aerogel as the insulation material to meet market demand.

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