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How do you extinguish a peat fire?
A safe and biodegradable formula, Peat FireX breaks through the duff layer while other products simply run off. Once Peat FireX breaks the surface tension of the soil, the product penetrates deep into peat and muck, stopping fires cold. And it stops peat fires with significantly less water and resources.
What is S zombie fire?
Blazes that burn over winter are also known as holdover or zombie fires. “So, the idea that because it can come back without a new ignition source burning and smouldering all winter, we call that a zombie fire. The term zombie fire is relatively new.”
How do you extinguish a zombie fire?
Also, these fires can be huge, and heavy machinery can only cover so much ground. So in the lab, Rein and his colleagues experimented with a novel anti-zombie weapon: water mixed with a nontoxic, readily available fire-extinguishing surfactant, also known as a wetting agent or suppressant.
How do zombie fires work?
Zombie fires happen as a result of wildfires. These fires can continue to burn all through winter, hidden under a layer of snow, and in spring as the temperature rises, the snow melts and the soil dries out, the wildfires can re-ignite and spread once again.
Why is the Artic on fire?
In the Arctic, fires usually start at the surface too, sparked by summer lightning or occasionally by humans. “These are ancient soils,” says Jessica McCarty, an Arctic scientist at Miami University in Ohio. “The peat in Siberia is really old.
What is peat for fire?
Peat consists of partially decomposed vegetation and contains varying amounts of carbon, sulphur and nitrogen compounds. When a fire occurs these compounds produce gases that may be very odorous and irritating. Peat smoke also tends to be thicker than the smoke released by other vegetation fires.
How does peat burn underground?
It’s basically concentrated carbon from dead plants, and it burns not at all like your typical Californian or Australian wildfire. Instead of sending towering flames upward, a peat fire burns in the opposite direction, smoldering deep in the soil.
Why does peat burn so well?
Peat has a high carbon content and can burn under low moisture conditions. Once ignited by the presence of a heat source (e.g., a wildfire penetrating the subsurface), it smoulders.
What happens when peat is burned?
Its destruction releases vast amounts of carbon, particularly methane, into the atmosphere. Burning, draining, and degrading peat bogs emits significant amounts of CO2 .
Why do peat bogs burn?
Peat is made up of sphagnum and other mosses, which hold a large amount of water and contain compounds that inhibit decomposition. Like forests, peatlands are threatened by climate change. Warming temperatures can dry out bogs, making them more susceptible to fires, and to deeper, more intense burning.
Why do the Irish burn peat?
In Ireland, peat has been used for centuries to warm homes and fire whiskey distilleries. Peat power peaked in the 1960s, providing 40\% of Ireland’s electricity. But peat is particularly polluting. Burning it for electricity emits more carbon dioxide than coal, and nearly twice as much as natural gas.
How does surfactant work to stop zombie fire?
Compared to the same amount of plain water, the water with surfactant cut the time needed to extinguish the blaze by 40 percent. Thanks to that decreased surface tension, instead of creating channels, the mixture more uniformly penetrated the soil, so little patches of zombie fire had nowhere to hide.
What is a peat fire?
Instead of sending towering flames upward, a peat fire burns in the opposite direction, smoldering deep in the soil. Oftentimes, firefighters will soak the ground with water and declare victory, only for the soil to reignite a surface fire months later.
What are ‘zombie fires?
That’s why scientists dub these menaces “zombie fires.” If that wasn’t terrifying enough, peat fires can release 100 times the carbon that a wildfire does. That’s terrible both for the planet and for human health: In Indonesia, which has massive stores of peat that regularly burn uncontrolled, the smoke creates regular public health crises.
How do you use surfactant to extinguish fire?
Above the box they situated a nozzle to spray either regular water or their special blend on different fires. Compared to the same amount of plain water, the water with surfactant cut the time needed to extinguish the blaze by 40 percent.