Airports Company South Africa

The Client

Airports Company of South Africa Limited (ACSA) operates many of South Africa’s busiest airports. The company currently manages a network of nine airports including the three main international gateways of O.R. Tambo International, Cape Town International and King Shaka International Airports. These airports facilitate nearly 40 million passengers per annum.

Risks & Consequences

The fire risks involved in this particular application include electrical faults, battery compartment ignitions, accidents and of course human error. In a fire, any type of material/fuel may combust. It is therefore, vital that the fire extinguishing system is effective against various classes of fire and can operate as early as possible to avoid further harmful effects to assets or to human lives.

The Task

The engineers’ mission was to safely replace the existing FM-200 clean agent gas systems installed in electrical substations with FirePro condensed aerosol fire suppression systems. The electrical equipment present in these electrical substations is relied upon to power the air traffic control systems and for this reason no interruption to the functioning of equipment could be tolerated. The system must also be compact and have low maintenance requirements.

Why FirePro?

ACSA requested proposals from the industry to refurbish the existing systems, when the drawbacks of the pressurized piped system with a Global Warming Potential of 3500 were recognized. As a result, ACSA decided to replace all FM-200 systems in their substations with FirePro fire suppression systems. The FirePro modular solutions eliminated the need for complex piping networks and have been proven to be exceptionally reliable, with little maintenance over their 15-year lifetime.

Results of Implementation

FirePro FP-5700 extinguishing generators were installed to protect the main volumes and
FirePro FP-500 to protect the cable trenches of electrical substations. The electrical substations
consist of a number of main volumes which are monitored by an analogue addressable fire
control panel with extinguishing release control panels installed at the entrance of each
main volume. Both the generators in the main volume and those in the cable trenches of the
associated main volume would be activated simultaneously by the appropriate extinguishing
release control panel.