Pipes, Fittings & Valves How copper can help to minimise fire damage

With its durability and ability to withstand high temperatures, copper pipework represents the ideal material for use in fire sprinkler systems. Here the Copper Sustainability Project (CuSP) highlights some of its key fire-fighting benefits.

Earlier this year, new fire safety regulations came into force – the Fire Safety (England) Regulations 2022 – the latest in a long line of laws that have emerged since the Grenfell fire disaster. Since the fire, most regulatory changes have focused on building exteriors, but what about the hidden fire risks that lie within homes and office spaces hidden behind our walls – such as piping materials?

Relatively cheap and widely available, plastic materials have been increasingly integrated into the built environment, despite their lack of sustainable qualities and fire-safe traits.

Recent research has helped to highlight the dangers of using manmade materials within the built environment. One recent experiment saw a room filled with synthetic furnishings set on fire, compared to a room filled with items made from natural materials. The synthetic room was engulfed in flames in just five minutes, compared to the room with natural furnishings, which wasn’t even fully engulfed after 29 minutes, thereby demonstrating the dangers of plastics and synthetic materials.

Natural choice

Among the numerous qualities that make natural materials such as copper the superior piping choice is copper’s extreme durability, making it the perfect choice for use in fire sprinkler systems.

With average structural fires generating temperatures up to 816°C, it’s of the utmost importance that building materials can withstand this so as not to cause further danger or damage.

Copper has a melting point of 1085°C, making it safe even in a hotter-than-average structural fire. Meanwhile, PVC, the most common plastic used in pipes, has a combustion point of 421°C, a much less safe option.

Sprinklers must be available in every area of highrise buildings over the height of 11m to ensure fires can be extinguished, meaning a complex network of pipes is required. Unlike some other metals, copper is flexible and can be bent around obstacles, making it easier to create pipework networks. Copper pipes, of course, can be joined together using soldering or brazing techniques, resulting in extremely strong bonds and a secure network that is very unlikely to leak.

What’s more, being corrosion-resistant and anti-microbial, copper pipes inhibit the growth of fungi, mould or other substances that could block the pipes, reducing their efficacy. Since the sprinkler systems would need to function extremely quickly in emergent situations, there is no time for pipes to have blockages and slow down the delivery of the water or fire-stopping liquid.

Heat absorber

In addition to being the gold standard of pipe material, in powder form, copper can be an extremely effective fire extinguisher thanks to its unique properties. Copper powder fire extinguishers are specifically designed to fight fires involving flammable metals, such as magnesium, titanium, lithium, sodium, potassium, and other similar materials.

As a superb conductor, when released from the extinguisher, the copper powder absorbs the heat from the fire and surrounding materials, reducing the temperature of the fire, and slowing down the combustion process.

Secondly, similar to how sand can extinguish fires, the copper powder covers the fire, eliminating oxygen from the reaction, and putting out the fire. However, more chemically complex than sand, copper can also interfere with the chemical reactions of the fire, quickening the process of extinguishing the flame.

The copper residue left after the fire has been extinguished can prevent the fire from restarting by forming a barrier between the residual heat and oxygen.

Sustainable strength

One of the principal advantages of installing copper is its infinite recyclability, meaning it can be used over and over without losing any of its qualities, making it able to save a countless number of lives.

While it is positive that new fire safety regulations have been implemented in the UK, it remains critical to examine the fire safety of all materials used in the built environment, especially those interwoven through our buildings.

The use of plastics must be reduced. In addition to the risk of their combustibility and fire spreading quickly, they are very difficult to extinguish with water or foam as they are at risk of splattering, causing the fire to spread more. Furthermore, the fumes released from the burning material can be extremely toxic and harmful to human health.

An investigation has found that up to a dozen Grenfell firefighters have now been diagnosed with terminal cancer, the majority of which are believed to be incurable digestive cancers and leukaemia, which are linked to high levels of exposure to carcinogens during their rescue efforts.

Test of time

Installing copper into the fire sprinkler network in buildings reduces the risks of pipe blockages and ensures that the sprinkler system will stand the test of time, while copper powder offers a safe way to extinguish certain fires, ensuring they won’t relight.

It’s time for unsafe plastics to be eliminated from the built environment for fire safety, inside and out.

◼ phamnews.co.uk/623/27