Large scale fire test with a 1100 liter tank at the BAM Test Site for Technical Safety
Source: BAM, Division Tanks for Dangerous Goods and Accident Mechanics
Lightweight design in transportation leads to reduced fuel consumption and lower costs. The objective of this work was to equip transportation tanks made of glass-fibre reinforced plastics (GFRP) with passive fire protection to withstand a fire for at least 30 minutes. This allows the use of these tanks for transportation of dangerous goods regarding their fire safety according to the regulation stipulated in the ADR (European agreement concerning the national carriage of dangerous goods by road).
The untreated tank had a capacity of 1100 litres, a weight of 133 kg and was made of glass-fibre reinforced plastics and unsaturated polyester resin. In total, six real-scale tanks were tested in an outdoor fire test facility at the BAM Test Site for Technical Safety. One fire protection system was made of certain layers of a fire protective resin, which was directly embedded into the tank. Other systems consisted of intumescent coatings applied on the tank surface. The application of fire protection was also of interest, because of the complex geometry with edges, curves and recesses differing from common cylindrical tank shapes. For fire testing, the tanks were filled up to 80 % with water and fully engulfed by a pool fire as per ADR. All systems showed a protective impact. The epoxy based intumescent coating showed the best result. It was able to delay the time needed to reach 150 °C inside the tank by 20 min.
The fire resistance of lightweight composite tanks depending on fire protection systems
Sina Pötzsch, Simone Krüger, Christian Sklorz, Jörg Borch, Thilo Hilse, Frank Otremba
published in Fire Safety Journal, 2018, Volume 100, pages 118 - 127
BAM, Division Tanks for Dangerous Goods and Accident Mechanics, Division Technical Properties of Polymeric Materials, and Division Corrosion and Corrosion Protection