Although sometimes used interchangeably, these terms are distinct. Understanding each one will help ensure that a building’s fire protection features operate as designed.
The
days of the sprinkler industry where there was the sprinkler that went up, the
sprinkler that went down, and the sprinkler that came out of the wall are long
gone. The challenge for the engineer now becomes
how to decipher the mountains of marketing and technical data and specify the
proper sprinkler.
Propylene glycol has been widely accepted and utilized in fire sprinkler systems for many years. Until recently it has been restricted to antifreeze loops on wet pipe sprinkler systems. Innovative advances in the design of sprinkler systems and full-scale fire testing of class 2 commodities in rack storage configurations have demonstrated that sprinkler systems pre-primed with a water and propylene glycol solution utilizing K 25.2 sprinklers are a viable option for the protection of cold storage occupancies under certain conditions.