Yusoff_2020_J._Phys.__Conf._Ser._1529_032098
Yusoff_2020_J._Phys.__Conf._Ser._1529_032098
Yusoff_2020_J._Phys.__Conf._Ser._1529_032098
Conference Series
yuzreenyusoff@gmail.com
Abstract.The KY Power Station relies on two gas turbines to generate electrical energy. In
addition, fuel storage is also required to ensure uninterrupted power supplies. As a power
generation plant and the existence of fuel storage, an efficient fire protection system is
essential. This paper presented a comprehensive review of the existing research on fire
protection systems. Utilising the reviewed as basis, this paper also described the five types of
KY Power Station fire protection systems as the case study. Specifically, the five fire
protection systems are; Water Spray Fixed System, Foam Protection System, Automatic
Carbon Dioxide Extinguishing System, Pressurized Fire Hydrant and lastly Automatic Fire
Detection and Alarm System. Even though a station may require more than one fire protection
systems as illustrated by the case study, this paper observed that the existing researches
focused mainly on designing the individual system of different fire protection system
according to standard. This paper found that there is lacked of research on optimising these
individual fire protection systems. The optimisation usually requires development of
mathematical model. Therefore, there is a need for development of mathematical model for the
individual fire protection system. These different types of fire protection systems are
independent but they are equally important. Thus, there is also a need to look into global
optimisation in designing the fire protection system.
1. Introduction
The KY Power Station is one of the industrial utilities located at Sabah, Malaysia. The KY Power
Station generates electricity from primary energy [1]. Like most of the power plants, the KY Power
Station uses generators to convert mechanical energy into electrical energy and then supplies the
power to the electrical grid to feed the community electricity needs. The KY Power Station relies on
two gas turbines to generate electrical energy. At the same time, as the gas turbine get their power
from the burning fuel in the combustion chamber and then drive the turbine that have the sharing shaft
with the generator that generates electricity, fuel storage is required inside the power station to ensure
uninterrupted power supplies, which eventually can cause a power cut. Electricity powers that
generates by the gas turbine will travels out to the transformer inside the same power station. This
transformer step-up the electricity to a very high voltage as it leaves the power plant and entering the
electrical grid to move along power lines to homes and businesses.
Content from this work may be used under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 licence. Any further distribution
of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the title of the work, journal citation and DOI.
Published under licence by IOP Publishing Ltd 1
JICETS 2019 IOP Publishing
Journal of Physics: Conference Series 1529 (2020) 032098 doi:10.1088/1742-6596/1529/3/032098
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Journal of Physics: Conference Series 1529 (2020) 032098 doi:10.1088/1742-6596/1529/3/032098
organization or operator to successfully respond on fire emergencies, adequate attention must be paid
to the fire pre-planning, staff training, emergency preparedness reviews and lastly perform the regular
testing on emergency response plans.
The incidents and studied presented before showed that it is very important for every power station
to have a safety precaution to be properly designed and installed. Not only in preventing any losses,
and most importantly preventing any harm to all power station staffs. For the KY Power Station, there
are five (5) types of fire protections system proposed and later installed on site by considering all the
assets to be protected. In this paper all the systems will be discussed and explained as all the system
works together to protect the KY Power Station.
2. Literature Review
There are several papers studied issues related to the fire-fighting systems for a power station. These
fire-fighting systems are designed to protect different functional or sections within the power station
such as the storage fuel tanks, transformers and electrical equipment.
For the storage tanks, for instance, Alimohammadi et al [7], in paper titled ’A novel method to
design water spray cooling system to protect floating roof atmospheric storage tanks against fires’,
studied the total water demanded or required to extinguish fire using the linear density method. The
quantity of water demanded was then used to calculate the storage tank dimension. They compared all
the average methods including National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) and Institute Petroleum
(IP) standards with their new proposed linear density method. They concluded that their method is
better in protecting the tanks. Whereas Xu-qing, Quan-zhen and Hong [8] did a study on the current
fire fighting system applied in China for the fuel storage tanks in their research titled ‘Study of Fire
Fighting System to extinguish full surface fire of large scale floating roof tanks’. By comparing the
current design with the American Petroleum Institute (API) codes, they concluded that the current
design needs to be raised up 6-10 times to be properly protecting all the storage tanks.
Adapting the same system for the transformers, Duarte [9] done a study on the usage of standard
and codes in design the water spray fixed system for high voltage power transformer. In his paper
titled ‘Aspect of Transformer Fires in Brazil’ he explained the transformer fire happened in Brazil and
came out with a way in preventing fire to happen at the transformer. He stated that the used of
standards and codes in the form of good practice helps to avoid hazards from happening. Constatantin
et al [10] called these current standards and codes in guiding the transformer as the old fire-fighting
system. Constatantin et al [10], in their paper ‘Transformer Protection and Fire Fighting Systems used
in High Voltage Power Stations’, proposed a new system called the Sergi Nitrogen Injection System to
be used in protecting the transformer. Focusing in protecting the high voltage power transformer, they
did a comparison between both the proposed Sergi Nitrogen Injection System with the water spray
fixed system (old system) through the analysis on advantages and disadvantages of the systems. They
concluded that the proposed modern system, which name as the Sergi Nitrogen Injection System, is
more reliable system compare to the older fire-fighting system.
In the fire-fighting system, apart from the water spray fixed system, fuel storage needs another
protection known as Foam System. The foam system is used to cover the oil surface in case of fire to
immediately extinguish the fire by preventing the oxygen, which aids the burning. Most of
organization sets the activating foam system manually to keep it as the last decision to be made, which
otherwise may cause a huge total loss to them. However, AfaqAhmed et al [11] in their paper ‘Design
of Automated Fire and Safety System in Tanks and Vessels’, monitored the functionality of the
thermocouple and peripheral interface controller (PIC) system in operating flow to control valve for
the foam system. They found that many tanks fire can be avoided by using the automated foam
system, which in fact can be adapted in both small and large tanks.
Apart from the fuel tanks and transformers, a set of power station also requires electrical equipment
to control and monitor the whole power station system in generating electricity. All the electrical
equipment will be placed in a room, which is normally known as electrical control room. According to
Raj et al [12] in their study on electrical control room, carbon dioxide snuffing system should be
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designed and engineered to protects the components and equipment in electrical room from causing
massive damage due to fire. However, carbon dioxide extinguishing system can be harmful to human
in the same space or room. Carbon dioxide extinguishing system will create a probable health risk for
people inside the room. Therefore, the used of clean agent as extinguishing system is introduced as it
poses a much lower health risk to people compared to carbon dioxide [13]. There are several types of
gases that classified as clean agents namely as FM-200, FE-13, Novec 1230, INERGEN and etcetera.
These gases are generally safe to be discharged even with the human present. Besides, the clean agent
is also known able to extinguish faster up to 10 seconds or less. It was also more effective to be used
in electrical rooms as clean agents as they are electrically non-conductive and non-corrosive. Hence,
there will be no damage to all electronics and delicate mechanical devices or equipment. Most
importantly, there will be no cost of clean up after extinguished as the clean agent will rapidly
vaporizes to gas during discharge and evaporates cleanly without leaving any residue behind.
A power station also requires a full time monitoring in case fire might happen. The full monitoring
can be performed using the fire detection and fire alarm systems. However, as mentioned by Festag
[14] in his paper titled ‘False alarm ratio of fire detection and fire alarm systems in Germany – A meta
analysis’, a false alarm might be happened to the fire alarm system. He outlined three possible
reasons, which are technical defect, deceptive alarm and lastly because of malicious and good intent.
He used a meta-analysis to analyse all the possible causes that happened in Germany. Despite the
research was focused in studying the cause of false alarm, Festag [14] keeps emphasizing the facts that
fire detection and fire alarm systems are useful means to reach the objectives of fire protection. The
fire detection and fire alarm systems can provide an early alert that can reduce property damage
considerably and more importantly, save human lives. Following that, Dong et al [15] proposed a
wireless fire alarm system instead of wired type that commonly used. They compared between wired
and new wireless automatic fire alarm panel and concluded that wireless automatic fire alarm system
requires only low power consumption, real-time transmission and have low error rate. Thus, they
concluded that the wireless type of fire alarm can help improve the fire safety level of 3 in 1 place
such as multi-property street shops, brick and wood relics and ancient buildings, temporary buildings
and etcetera.
Lastly, to protect the power station parameter, pressurized hydrant was also required to be installed.
As mentioned in article ‘Pressurized Systems’, Eckman [16] stated that the quality of pressurized
system in fire protection system is determined by the amount of water in storage, the maximum
production rate, the distribution system, and the installation and maintenance of fire hydrants.
Therefore, he has listed eight (8) things to be considered in designing a pressurized system for
firefighting system. The things to be considered are designing water supply, available flow,
distribution system, distribution system, system design, emergency operation, hydrant operation,
hydrant maintenance and operation and lastly, fire department responsibilities.
3. Case Study
The KY Power Station, which is built on an 11,325 m2 area, is completed in 2017 and able to generate
total power of 32MW to the surrounding community. The power is generated by using two gas
turbines with the help of two power transformers, which controls the voltage before the power is
released to the electrical grids and serves homes and businesses. Knowing that lots of people require a
power supply to support in their daily routines, has forced the organization to install the essential fire
protection systems onto the power station parameter. The fire protection systems will minimize the
possibility of any power interruption. Regardless, the KY Power Station still keeps safety as
significant and essential to be incorporated in the power station fire-fighting design. Meanwhile, to
ensure that the gas turbines are running smoothly without shortage supply of fuel oil, numbers of
storage tanks are located at the KY Power Station compound. MV Room, LV Room and Battery
Room, which are located at the power house, are parts of electrical rooms to support the whole system
of the power station.
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Journal of Physics: Conference Series 1529 (2020) 032098 doi:10.1088/1742-6596/1529/3/032098
As shown in Figure 2, the KY Power Station requires large area to run the power station and to
keep providing electrical power to the community. It is almost impossible to have a person to fully
guarding the KY Power Station compound and informing any hazards happen or reporting it directly
to the Local Fire and Rescue Department to ask for help instantly. There will be a possibility that
accidents have occurred badly before the Fire and Rescue Department arrived. Even worse, fire might
destroyed everything both assets and human lives before they could arrive. Therefore, ‘Automatic Fire
Detection and Alarm System’ has been proposed to this Power Station in order to have a better
guarding, which only requires 24 hours manned in control room.
However, it is important to know that all the proposed and then installed fire protection systems in
the KY Power Station. The fire protection systems were designed while considering or fulfilling
numbers of Design Codes, Standards and Regulations of fire fighting either locally or internationally.
First of all, “Uniform Building By-Law 1984” [17] was referred to ensure the fulfilments of the
building requirements for ‘Power Station’ type of building in term of protection. As the KY Power
Station was not totally categorized as a building the “Guide to Fire Protection in Malaysia (2006)”
[18] was referred. However, the guide focused only on a common protection whereas the KY Power
Station require more than just a common protection. Therefore, reference was shifted to the National
Fire Protection Association (NFPA) [19] codes and standards, which provides all the guidelines in
designing fire protection thoroughly whether as a common or special fire protection system. This fire
protection system can also be installed at different type of organizations. Nevertheless, due to the
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certain reason, the water spray system for the storage tanks was developed using the Institute
Petroleum (IP) [20] codes for the design.
There are five main types of fire protection system required for the KY Power Station based on
mentioned fire codes and authority requirements. The five types of fire protection system namely are;
water spray fixed system for transformer and fuel storage tanks, foam protection system for storage
tanks and bund area, automatic carbon dioxide extinguishing system for electrical rooms, pressurized
fire hydrant for the parameter protection and lastly automatic fire detection and alarm system for
monitoring the whole power station. However, to ensure all the proposed fire protection systems to be
functioning, the systems need support from a set of water pumping system with total capacity of water
storage.
3.1. The Existing Fire Fighting Water Storage Tank and Water Pump Set
Before the KY Power Station was established in 2017, that site was an abandoned power station about
more than five years with most of fire protection still existed including the hydrant pipeline, water
tanks and also the water pump set. When the owner decided to rehabilitate the place, due to the cost
constraints both of the water tanks and water pump set was reused. This scenario required the
contractor to refurbish and maintain the equipment. Therefore, for the new power station, the new fire
protection system was designed by the engineer with consideration of both existing water tanks and
pump set capacity.
As stated in “Guide to Fire Protection in Malaysia (2006)” [18], for every fire protection system
that used water based as a fire extinguisher, the owner is required to store water for a total of one hour
pump operated with continuously supply from local water supply authority, which is in this case was
the Jabatan Air Department.
As the system consists of various types of fire protection, to confirm that the storage capacity meets
the requirements, the worst-case scenario will be applied with assumption that fire would not happen
simultaneously. For the KY Power Station, there are total three types of fire protection systems that
require water in their operations. The systems are the fire hydrant that protects the power station
parameter, the water spray fixed system for storage tanks, and also for transformers. By referring to
the location and condition of all the hazards in the KY Power Station, the worst case scenario
consisted of three numbers of fire hydrant was used [18] and three water spray fixed systems at the
fuel storage tanks were activated. With the current two water storage tanks as shown in Figure 3, the
system can support a total 1.28 hours of total water storage, which fulfils the local fire department
requirement.
Meanwhile, usually a system was designed and calculated before the pump capacity was identified.
In contrast, all the new fire protection systems for the KY Power Station was design to suit the
capacity of the pump by altering the pipe sizing in order to match with the existing pump head and
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flow rate. A set of fire-fighting system must be equipped with one motor-driven firewater pump, one
diesel engine driven firewater pump as standby pump and one set of jockey pump.
3.2. Water Spray Fixed System (Transformer & Fuel Storage Tank
According to the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA), the fuel storage tanks and transformers
need to be protected by the water spray fixed system, which also performs as the cooling system for
the storage tank and extinguisher for the transformer. For both hazards, NFPA15 [19] recommends
applying fire water application rate of 10.2 L/min/m2. However, the Energy Institute Part 19 [20]
standard recommends the used of 2.0L/min/m2 fire water application rate. Due to this reason, the KY
Power Station fire water application rate is set at 2.0L/min/m2, which allows the use of existing water
storage capacity.
Even though Alimohammadi et al [7] found that the linear density method works better than
common method recommended by the NFPA or other common standard, it still cannot be applied to
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the new system design. This is because the linear density method has never been certified by any fire
organization or association either locally or internationally. The problem of utilising of uncertified
method has been emphasised by Xu-Xing, Quan-zhen and Hong [8]. They showed how in China the
uncertified method was far from the international certified standard and required enhancement.
Therefore, it is important to refer to the certified and testified standard as NFPA to make sure that the
hazards are properly protected.
However, Constatantin et al [10] stressed that using the water spray fixed system to protect the
transformer is not reliable. They proposed a new system known as the Sergi Nitrogen Injection
System. However, considering the possibility of fire might happen is low compare to the installed cost
and maintenance cost required this new system is considered to be not economical to be installed at
the KY Power Station.
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Figure 7. Foam Chamber installed to direct supplied foam inside the tank
While most of the power station owner prefers to locate the valve for the foam system activation
closed to the bund and tank area, AfidAhmed et al [11] argued that it is better to have automated
system for activating the foam system. The automated system was a better option as it would not
require human monitoring or human to open the valve. However, as long as total lost cost is still the
main reason to be considered, the automated system might be not an option as it will directly throw the
foam inside the tank without the owner knowledge.
Carbon dioxide system was harmed to human once the gas was release and can cause a death [21].
Following that, the clean agent gas was introduced as it harmless to human and also able to prevent
any damage to the electrical equipment inside the room. Only with these two advantages itself, it is
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strongly recommended to use the clean agent system even though the cost is twice from that the
carbon dioxide system.
Figure 9. Main Fire Alarm Panel complete with SPKA located at Control Room
As mentioned by Festag [14], by installing the automatic detection that link to the alarm panel, lots
of false alarm may be recorded. These false alarms may cause hassled as they may be thought as fire
really happened. As in KY Power Station, since the alarm panel link to local fire and rescue
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department, numbers of false alarm might cause them to be sceptical if actual fire may happen.
However, this would not be a reason not to install the fire alarm panel.
Fire hydrant system is designed with consideration of minimum three hydrants active during fire
outbreak. The fire water pressure shall be designed starting from fire water pump outlet to furthest
three hydrant points.
Figure 12 showed the pressurized hydrant. It requires a lot of consideration in designing the
pressurized hydrant as it also served the water to all the fire protection systems for both fuel storage
tanks and transformers protection which is water spray fixed system. Apart from that, the design also
considered the existing pump supplied flow rate that affecting the selection of pipe size to control the
operation flow rate of every outlet. Eckman [16] outlined four qualities that are required for the
pressurized hydrants. He also listed eight things to be considered in designing the pressurized hydrant.
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In conclusion, not only limited to the five protection systems stated in the literature, the portable
fire extinguisher was also provided inside the KY power house as an early protection that did not
require the active system to activate. Thus, with all total of five types of fire protection system
proposed and then installed at the KY Power Station, testing has been run and inspected by the local
fire department before the power station was approved to begin its operation. Based on that fact itself,
it is proven that the designed fire-fighting systems and then installation were performed according to
the standards and codes mentioned previously.
5. Conclusion
With a lot of fire accidents recorded at power station worldwide, it raised a lot of concern from the
organization in maintaining the safety of the KY Power Station while preventing the fire accidents
from happened. Therefore, engineer was hired to propose and design the fire prevention system around
the power station with guidance from the Design Codes, Standards and Regulations of firefighting
either locally or internationally. Specifically, the five fire protection systems are; Water Spray Fixed
System, Foam Protection System, Automatic Carbon Dioxide Extinguishing System, Pressurized Fire
Hydrant and lastly Automatic Fire Detection and Alarm System. As a result, the KY Power Station
has implemented adequate firefighting and prevention systems around the power station to ensure
continuous supply of power needed by the surrounding community.
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As future improvements on the KY Power Station, the foam system should be activated
automatically instead of manually, electrical room to be installed using the clean agent instead of using
carbon dioxide system and lastly to adapt the wireless fire alarm panel to improve the fire safety level.
Not limited to system itself, trained staffs are also required in handling the system. The staffs also
need to be educated and aware of every system installed in the KY Power Station.
In term of review of literature, this paper observed that the existing researches focused mainly on
designing the individual system of different fire protection system according to standard. This paper
found that there is lacked of research on optimising these individual fire protection systems. The
optimisation usually requires development of mathematical model. Therefore, there is a need for
development of mathematical model for the individual fire protection system. These different types of
fire protection systems are independent but they are equally important. Thus, there is also a need to
look into global optimisation in designing the fire protection system.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The authors would like to express gratitude to the Universiti Malaysia Sabah and KY Power Station
for the support given throughout the project.
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