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New sections of tunnels around Madrid are being installed with a water mist system from Marioff, as well as the main control centre and auxiliary control centre.
The Madrid Calle 30 project follows a similar installation on the A86 ring road around Paris. The system uses high pressure technology and dedicated nozzles, which spray very fine droplets of water over uniformly sized sections of tunnel. In the event of a fire, three predetermined sectors will be activated in order to cover a sufficient area around the seat of a fire. The water droplets rapidly absorb the heat, particularly by evaporation, giving effective cooling. They also reduce the amount of smoke produced by a fire by limiting the development of its rate of heat release. This, explains the company, contributes to safer evacuation and can save lives during the first critical phases of a fire, and also wins time to allow the arrival of the emergency services to contain and totally control the fire and suppresses it. This technology was originally developed for combat emergency situations on board ships.
The HI-FOG system, combined with the ventilation concept and other safety features designed in the tunnel, will ensure an optimum level of safety for people and the tunnel infrastructure, thus ensuring traffic continuity,” commented Petteri Saarinen, president of Marioff.