The fire-extinguishing performance and mechanism of fluorinated cyclobutane through experimental measurement and numerical calculation

Abstract

Research and development of new fire-extinguishing agents to replace halon is very urgent, and the properties of some fire-extinguishing agents with potential application value have not been studied. The molecular structure of octafluorocyclobutane (C₄F₈, C-318) is a quaternary ring structure consisting of four CF₂, resulting in suitable chemical activity and potential fire-extinguishing performance. However, the fire-extinguishing performance and mechanism of C-318 as a fire-extinguishing agent have not been studied in previous reports. In this paper, to explore environmentally friendly and high-performance chemical gas fire-extinguishing agents to replace halon agents, experimental measurements and theoretical calculations were performed to measure the extinguishing performance of C-318 against a methane flame and a propane flame, and to thoroughly analyze the reaction mechanism of C-318 with chain radicals. It was found that C-318 has relatively low minimum extinguishing concentrations (MECs) for suppressing methane–air (7.23 vol%) and propane–air (7.40 vol%) flames. Furthermore, combined with theoretical analysis of the decomposition mechanism and extinguishing mechanism, the feasibility of C-318 as a fire-extinguishing agent is verified, which lays a good foundation for large-scale experiments into its engineering application as a substitute for halon.