FIRETRACE® Protection for Singapore Aviation Authority’s Critical Assets

The CAAS regulates civilian air traffic within the airspace jurisdiction of the Republic and is responsible for maintaining the operational efficiency of the airports in Singapore.  Protecting the electrical cabinets is key to providing uninterrupted service and safety, as the CAAS also operates the Republic’s air traffic control service.

A total of 71 Firetrace systems have been commissioned.   They provide around-the-clock protection; they do not call for any manual intervention and require neither electricity nor external power.  If a fire occurs in a cabinet, the Firetrace system responds automatically, detecting and suppressing a fire in less than ten seconds.

Firetrace utilises purpose-designed leak-resistant polymer tubing that is attached to an extinguishing agent cylinder.  This flexible proprietary Firetrace Detection Tubing is a linear pneumatic heat and flame detector that is routed throughout the cabinet being protected.  When a fire breaks out, this tubing ruptures at the precise point where heat and radiant energy from the fire is detected.  This automatically triggers the release of the suppression agent – which for this application was DuPont™ FM-200® – extinguishing the fire.

Firetrace is available with a number of suppression agents, each suited to a particular fire risk or application. Clean gaseous agents are considered to be the most appropriate suppressant for the protection of electrical cabinets as they are non-corrosive and non-conductive, do not damage sensitive electrical equipment and combine the required fast-response fire suppression performance with minimal environmental impact.

“This contract is part of a growing worldwide trend for airports that are increasingly looking to guard against in-cabinet fires escalating into catastrophic fires, allowing back-up systems to continue operations without interruption,“ said Chua Boon Ping, Firetrace International’s Asia Pacific Sales Manager.  “Firetrace has recently completed a major airport project in Calgary, Canada utilising both the in-cabinet fire protection and the company’s new UL-Listed E⁴engineered clean agent total flooding system.  A major project was also completed in Delhi International Airport’s new Terminal Three building in India.”

The deciding factors in securing the CAAS order included Firetrace’s global track record for reliably protecting tens of thousands of electrical cabinets across a host of industries that includes power generation, mining, petrochemicals and telecommunications.  Such is the system’s reliability that, despite there being in excess of 250,000 Firetrace installations worldwide, there has never been a single reported incidence of a Firetrace system failing to suppress an in-cabinet fire or false alarming and unnecessarily discharging the suppression agent.

Technical support provided by both Firetrace and the installation contractor were also cited as critical considerations, as was Firetrace’s compliance with a host of international standard and codes of practice, including NFPA 2001:2012, BS EN 15004:2000 and more than 20 other international approvals and listings.  Firetrace is a tube-operated system that is tested as an automatic fire detection and suppression system that is UL (Underwriters Laboratories) Listed and FM (Factory Mutual) Approved.