What’s the science behind fire safety?
We don’t think about it, but there’s an amazing amount of science and engineering that goes into keeping us safe. TV shows like Anatomy of Disaster and industrial safety training courses show us that some big accidents rarely have a single cause but instead involve a chain of events where several things aren’t done correctly, leading to a disaster. Schoolchildren across the UK are probably familiar with the fire of London that happened in 1666 but science and engineering have moved on a lot since then and so have regulations around fabrics, buildings and personal protective equipment. What makes fire safety so complex? There is not a quick answer to that question so if we want to get to know fire we have to break it down.
To understand fire, we need to understand the chemistry
We need to start with the very basic here. To have fire you need three ingredients: oxygen, heat and fuel. So, you can put a match out by starving it of oxygen. Safety science also dictates that the fire must also be self-sustaining. Fire is a chemical process: the oxygen bonds to something i.e. oxidation. Most of the materials around us are made from hydrocarbons so lots of examples talk about oxidation of carbon-containing materials. The application of heat then kicks the system over some thermodynamic barrier and initiates oxidation. Since oxidation is an exothermic process…
