IWMA

The Call for Papers for the 8th International Water Mist Conference is available online. Please go to "Conference 2008" where you can download the file. The conference will be held from 17 - 19 September in Copenhagen. Please note for your travel planning that only IWMA meetings will take place on the 19th of September.

(28.04.2008) Seminar in Spain

The next IWMA seminar will be held in Madrid, Spain. IWMA continues its seminar series with this educational event in Spanish language. Interested parties from Spain should click HERE for further information

(16.04.2008) CEN guideline accepted

During the voting process the CEN guideline has been accepted by most European countries. Only very few voted against. The CEN guideline on water mist systems will thus become an official technical specification soon. According to information prvided by the German DIN the document will be published during the sommer.

(07.04.2008) CEN meeting this week in Rome

The CEN/TC 191 task group 3 of working group 5 will come together to its next meeting on April 8 and 9 in Rome. The "Instituto Superiore Antincendio (ISA) will host the meeting this time. We will keep you updated about the further work of the committee and the results accordingly. The NFPA will start the next revision cycle on NFPA 750 with the first meeting in August.

(04.04.2008) Tunnel Conference in Munich Review

The "Fire Suppression in Tunnels" Conference last week has been a successful experience for both IWMA and the COSUF committee. More than 100 delegates from various countries attended this event and appreciated the high level presentations by numerous experts in the field. The TÜV Academy in Munich turned out to be an excellent environment for the conference. We will make the presentations available to our membership. Members who are interested in the proceedings of the conference are asked to contact the IWMA office.

(27.03.2008) Tunnel Conference fast approaching

The "Fire Suppression in Tunnels" Conference is fast approaching. Over 100 delegates from different countries will attend this conference in Munich which will be held for the first time. Interested people can still regsiter until the beginning of conference sessions on the 2nd of April.

(19.03.2008) Water Mist Conference in September

The annual International Water Mist Conference will take place this year on the 17th and 18th of September 2008. The venue for this year's conference is Copenhagen. Detailed information on the conference will be on our web page as of 14 April.

(13.02.2008) Research Efforts will continue

The Finsish delegation at the IMO FP 52 session in January in London has submitted an information paper and proposed small changes to the IMO MSC/Circ. 1165 for machinery spaces and suggested mainly to include the following in the Circular:

"However, scaling from the maximum tested volume to twice the volume is permitted. The scaling does not apply to the ceiling height."

The working group for performance testing and approval standards during FP 52 agreed that additional information on the subject will be needed before this issue can be discussed further. It was proposed in the working group that the IWMA could become active and could start a project on "Scaling". The attendees appreciated this idea and asked the IWMA to do so. The Scientific Council and others will now go ahead and explore if the necessary data for this project can be generated.

(08.02.2008) Tunnel Conference approaching

In about 8 weeks, the jointly IWMA/COSUF conference "FIRE SUPPRESSION IN TUNNELS" will be held in Munich, Germany, on April 2 - 3. A number of delegates have already registered for this event, and a good final audience can be expected. Please go to "tunnel conference 2008" for more information and registration.

(05.02.2008) IWMA Board members came together

The IWMA board members came together last week for a meeting. Besides items like the forthcoming tunnel conference, the budget situation and the IWMA annual conference, the board has appointed new members to the Scientific Council. Mrs. Louise Jackman of BRE (UK), Mr. Arnaud Breton of CNPP (France) and Bjarne Husted of DBI (Denmark) were appointed. The Scientific Council under the chairmanship of Bert Yu consists now, together with Magnus Arvidson and Carsten Palle, of six members.

(10.01.2008) IMO FP 52 Subcommittee meeting from January 14 - 18 in London

Tho IMO Subcommittee meeting on Fire Protection (FP 52) will be held in London during the next week. Parts of the agenda will deal wth water mist techcology again. The draft MSC circular on Guidelines for the approval of fixed pressure water spraying and water based fire-extinguishing systems for cabin balconies will be discussed again this time as well as effect of
scaling the volume to larger-than-tested volumes on the water-based fire-fighting system performance.

(02.12.2008) The International Water Mist Association wishes its members and the whole cfire safety ommunity a successful year 2008

(04.12.2007) IWMA Conference 2007 - A Review

Almost 100 attendees registered this year for the 7th IWMA conference which was held in Paris, France, from 28 - 30 November. A broad array of topics, such as research issues on modeling, application examples for archives, atriums, glass protection and heritage buildings as well as newest developments with respect to international guidelines for water mist technology was discussed. Particularly the site visit at the CSTB institute in Paris, where attendees had the possibility to see real fire demonstrations, added value to the conference, and newcomers to the field had the opportunity to see water mist in action. The IWMA members decided during the member meeting to hold the next water mist conference in 2008 in Copenhagen. Fire demonstrations at the Danish institute DIFT will be again part of the agenda. The date for next year's event will be announced on the IWMA web page soon. Attendees will receive soon the papers and presentations of the conference. The papers will be published on our web page later in 2008.

(30.11.2007) IWMA Seminar Series continued in the UK

IWMA has held a seminar on water mist technology for fire-fighting on the 26th of November at BRE Watford in London. Over 50 attendees used the possibility to spend an informative day at the Building Research Establishment. Due to the success of the event, it is likely that the seminar will be held again in 2008. Please see the IWMA web page for further announcements.

(26.11.2007) Tunnel Conference Coming Up

IWMA and the Committee on Operational Safety of Underground Facilities (COSUF) will hold a joint conference on Fire Suppression in Tunnels. The conference will be held from 2 - 3 April, 2008, at the TÜV Academy in Munich, Germany. The event focuses on fixed fire suppression systems for tunnel applications and includes related topics such as detection, reliability and cost. Experts from government, research bodies and the fire protection industry present latest findings. For more useful information please click the respective menu button on the left.

(24.11.2007) IWMA Conference in Paris

Almost 90 attendees have registered for the IWMA conference this year which will be held in Paris next week. It can be therefore expected a successful event which will be even more interesting this year due to the real fire demonstration at the CSTB institute which will be conducted on the first conference day in the afternoon. Interested parties who still wish to attend the meeting can even register on the 28th of November just before conference sessions.

(21.11.2007) IWMA Seminar in London

The IWMA Seminar series will be continued in the UK on the 26th of November, 2007. More than 50 attendees from different areas of the industry such as engineers, consultants, insurance company representatives and government authorities representatives will attend the seminar at BRE London Watford soon. There is still space avaiable. Please view the programme on top of the page.

(14.11.2007) NFPA 750 Revision

The NFPA 750 Guideline for Water Mist Systems will be officially entering the next revision cycle in January of 2008. The committee will be then receiving public proposals for revisions until May 30, 2008. The first meeting of the Water Mist Committee for the 2009 revision cycle will be some time in the summer of 2008. We will keep our members informed about the work of the committee.

(09.11.2007) ISTSS 2008

The International Symposium on Tunnel Safety and Security will be held from March 12 - 14, 2008, in Stockholm, Sweden. After the first and second syposium in Washington and Madrid, the meeting will this time take place in Northern Europe and is going to be organized by SP Sweden.

(05.11.2007) UPTUN Guidance available

The steering board of the research project UPTUN has recently approved revision number 8 of the "Engineering Guidance for Water Based Fire Fighting Systems for the Protection of Tunnels and Subsurface Facilities". The file has been uploaded to our web page and can be downloaded HERE respectively.

(29.11.2007) CEN meeting in Barcelona

The meeting of CEN task group on water mist met in Barcelona 25-26 October. CEN TC 14972 has now passed all formal stages in CEN, and will soon be published. The Task Group discussed a new test protocol for Atrium protection with sidewall water mist distribution, and reached a stage where most problems of this draft was solved. This test protocol will meet a special need in the market, since it may cover applications like hotel lobbies, airport public areas and other spaces with high ceiling height and low fire load.

(19.10.2007) Board meeting took place recently

The IWMA board came together recently and discussed current matters such as the upcoming IWMA conference and planned seminars in the UK and Italy. Particularly a proposal of the Scientific Council on the planned research project was discussed this time. The members of the Scientific Council proposed to develop a reserach program on the protection of ordinary hazards. It was further recommended to look into scaling in the second place. The board members approved this proposal. A detailed project description will be developed and shared with the members for comments soon.

(12.10.2007) SUPDET 2008

The Supdet Conference 2008 will be held from March 11 - 13, 2008, in Orlando. Some papers will be given agin on water mist technology. Interested parties who would like to have the 2007 papers on water mist may contact our office.

(05.10.2007) Fire Suppression in Prisons

According to information from BRE in the UK, The Ministry of Justice in the UK is looking at fire suppression in prisons cells at present. BRE Fire and Security will basically undertake this program. This work shall review the fuel loading of cells and the potential effectiveness of water mist suppression systems (or other systems) in tackling cell fires. BRE intends to develop of typical fire scenario in prison cells and wants to undertake feasibility experiments. Commercially available systems shall be tested in November and December. Kelvin Annable at BRE is responsible for this program.

(24.09.2007) Seminar for UK is coming up

IWMA will conduct a water mist seminar in the United Kingdom on the 26th of November. BRE will host this seminar at its facilities near London. The program and registration form will be available soon.

(20.09.2007) Newest Version of the Conference Program

The latest draft of the preliminary program for the IWMA conference can be downloaded. Please click HERE to get the respective file. There might be slight changes to the program due to further incoming inquiries for presentations. We will keep you updated.

(17.09.2007) Member Companies came together

Member companies of IWMA met in order to discuss questions of common interest on the field of water mist technology. The attendees agreed to conduct these kind of meetings more often in the future.

(12.09.2007) Conference Program available

The first draft of the conference program is available. Please click HERE

(01.09.2007) Old Lines work again

IWMA can be reached again under regular phone and fax number. The temporary numbers do no have to be dialed any longer.

Temporary Phone and Fax Number

The IWMA office can be temporarily reached under the following phone and fax number until the old lines are fixed again:

Phone: +49 392 98 299 81

Fax: +49 392 98 299 82

(09.08.2007) SUPDET 2007 papers available

At the SUPDET conference from March 5-8, 2007 in Orlando, some papers on water mist technology were presented. Please find attached to this mail the respective papers. More papers of this conference can be viewed and donwloaded under http://www.nfpa.org/itemDetail.asp?categoryID=993&itemID=34605&URL=Research%20&%20Reports/Fire%20Protection%20Research%20Foundation/Proceedings

(21.07.2007) Provider change

Due to a provider change, the web page was offline for a few days. We apologize for that. Now The web site and its content is completely transfered and the entire content is available again.

(16.07.2007) Board meeting took place

The IWMA board members met via teleconference in order to discuss possibilties to conduct a tunnel conference for fire protection. The board members agreed to pursue this issue further. It is roughly planned to hold a tunnel conference in spring 2008. Further announcements will be made.

(11.07.2007) Temporary Phone and Fax Number

The IWMA office can be temporarily reached under the following phone and fax number until the old lines are fixed again:

Phone: +49 392 98 299 81

Fax: +49 392 98 299 82

(09.07.2007) Telecommunication Problems continue

The IWMA office can be reached by email again but phone and fax remain to be disconnected. We will provide a temporary phone number by July 10th.

(07.07.2007) IWMA Board Meeting

The IWMA Board of Directors will meet again on the 11th of July via teleconference. The board will discuss current matters that have to be resolved.

(28.06.2007) Communication Problems

IWMA can not be reached by regular phone or fax. E-mail is supposed to work again in a few days. Due to a thunderstorm a telecommunication cable has been severely damaged. We apologize for any inconvenience. We hope that the telecommunication company will fix the problem asap.

(14.06.2007) Call for Papers

The Call for Papers for the 7th IWMA onference can be found under "Conference 2007", and can be downloaded. Interested parties may submit an abstract no later than July 27.

(06.06.2007) IWMA extends Membership Benefits

As of July 2007, members of the International Water Mist Association receive an additional benefit. The members of the association will get a free subscription to "industrial Fire Journal". one of the market-leading journals reporting to the oil, gas chemical, power, marine, aviation and other high risk industries with a circulation to more than 150 countries. The subscription has a value of 65 Euro.

(29.05.2007) UTC acquires Marioff

According to an announcement by United Technologies, it is going to acquire Marioff Corporation Oy. The company said it expects the transaction to close before the end of June, subject to regulatory approval. It was further reported that Marioff's President Petteri Saarinen and the senior management team will remain with the company.

(24.05.2007) CEN meeting in Cologne

The last CEN meeting was in Cologne on May 14/15. The group membersparticularly discussed the test protocol for "Deep fat Fryers and Kitchen Protection" and completed this protocol during the meeting. This test protocol was harmonized as much as possible with ISO standard 75371, which is currently under preparation, and will be suggested to be included in the forthcoming CEN TS 14972. The CEN TS 14972 will now undergo final voting by the member countries.

(22.05.2007) Seminar in Spain

The IWMA is planning a local educational seminar on water mst technology for Spain on the 20th of September. The meeting will be held in local language as usual and will be supported by the Spanish MAPFE foundation.

(18.05.2007) CEN meeting took place

The Members of the working group 5 met again on May 14 and 15 in Cologne to continue their work on the European guidleline for water mist systems. We will announce on our web page if essential changes to the current draft guideline were made.

(04.05.2007) Tunnel Safety Forum for Road and Rail

From April 23 - 25, a conference on tunnel safety was held in Nice. A large number of participants such as tunnel owners, consultants, operators, authorities and manufacturers of tunnel systems from different countries were attending the Forum organised by Tunnel Management International. As Board member Erik Christensen reports, the broad program covered operational safety, detection and suppression, Incident management & human factors, Ventilation, an overview of the Melbourne tunnel fire and more. The program included as well a field trip to a tunnel close to Nice. It became obvious during the conference that, from a water mist point of view, a water mist system is the perfect medium to cool down the environment when a lot of heat will be accumulated due to a growing fire in the tunnel. The papers, including a paper on water mist design for tunnels by Danfoss, is issued as a book by Independent Technical Conferences Ltd. ISBN 1 901808 26 2

(26.04.2007) Water Mist Engineering acquired by Simtronics

Simtronics ASA, the Norwegian fire and gas safety company, announced a few days ago the acquisition of Water Mist Engineering AS (WME). Simtronic acquired this manufacturer of low pressure water mist system because it is part of Simtronics' strategy to become a leading supplier of systems for fire and gas safety.

(24.04.2007) Super Heated Water Mist

The company INCOM AG has bought the patent for a system that uses "superheated" water as suppression medium. The system works in a way that heated water expands "explosion like" (steam explosion) after the valve was opened. Due to this a big amount of water steam (MicroMist) is available in a very short time to extinguish fires.

(19.04.2007) Report Published

The report "Development of a lower-cost sprinkler system for domestic premises in the UK" has been published in the United Kingdom at the beginning of April. The report by the British Government can be downloaded by using the link http://www.communities.gov.uk/index.asp?id=1509323
As the title already reveals, the authors are looking low-cost systems for houses by using the public main. This market might be interesting for low pressure water mist system manufacturers, too, as long as the provided pressure of the main at street level is sufficient.

(16.04.2007) IWMA Board Meeting

The IWMA board met last week and continued particularly the discussion on the planned research project to be carried out in 2008. The board members agreed to go for a project on libraries/archives. It is now intended to draft a project sketch together with the Scientific Council. It is further planned to apply for funding at the European Union.

(04.04.2007) Water Mist Guideline in French Language

A working group under the leadership of CNPP, GIFEX and GIS is currently working on a guideline for water mist in French language for the market in France. The chairman of this working group is Arnaud Breton of CNPP. Some IWMA members such as LPG, Desautel, Fogtec and Tyco participate in this group and meet once a month. The basis for the French guideline is the CEN guideline 14972 for water mist sysrems.

(30.03.2007) Water Mist Conference 2007

The International Water Mist Conference will be held this year in Paris, France. The conference is going to be a little bit later this year on November 28 - 30, 2007. You will find detailed information about our conference as of April 5, 2007, on our web page.

(26.03.2007) Market Development 2006

IWMAis permanently doing estimations on the development of annual sales for high pressure and low pressure water mist worldwide. New estimates revealed that the market for water mist systems grew - with respect to the land based market - in 2006 compared to the previous year about 25 - 30 %. The marine market is considered to be stable with no significant changes compared to 2005. It is estimated that the sales in the land market grew from about 140 Mio EUR in 2005 to about 180 Mio EUR in 2006. Manufacturers of water mist systems report a continuous increase of inquiries so that the growth in 2007 is expected to be in the two digit area again.

(22.03.07) Annual Fire Conference 2007

The Annual Fire Conference 2007, organized by the Building Fire and Research Laboratory of NIST, will be held from 4 - 5 April in Gaitherburg, Maryland,
USA. It is intended to present and to discuss fire research topics that have an impact on federal agencies, fire protection engineering, fire and building codes/standards and
more. For more information, please go to
http://www.bfrl.nist.gov/info/fireconf/AFC2007/FlyerAnnualFireConf2007.pdf

(20.03.07) Conference Papers available

The papers of previous IWMA conferences have been made available for download on our web page. You will find these papers in pdf format under menu button "Conference Papers" where you can click on the year you are looking for. The years 2004 and 2005 are now online. The other papers will be available as well by next Monday.

(16.03.07) Seminar for Italy

The Italian Members of the IWMA came together again to make final arrangements for the seminar in Italy. Representatives of companies, private members of IWMA, researchers of the school and our general manager met at the Polytechnical University of Milano in order to discuss the final agenda for the upcoming seminar in Italy.
The seminar will be held at the Polytechnical University on the 8th of May, 2007. The meeting will be conducted mostly in local language by our Italian members and partly in English language. The agenda will as usually combine theoretical and practical issues so that the attendees get a comprehensive overview about water mist technology.

(12.03.07) Report on the investigation of the fire onboard Star Princess of Jamaica available

The Marine Accident Investigation Branch has published the report on the the fire onboard Star Princess. It was found out that six fires on balconies occured where either plastic chairs or beach towels had caught alight, and the fire spread very rapidly. Part of the recommendations is ensuring that balcony partitions are non-combustible, restricting the use of combustible materials on stateroom balconies, and requiring ships with stateroom balcony furniture which is not of restricted fire risk be fitted with fixed fire extinguishing and fire detection systems. The link to the full report is http://www.maib.gov.uk/cms_resources/Star%20Princess.pdf

(07.03.07) Reports from BRE

BRE has recently published a report called "An independent Guide on Water Mist for Residential Buildings". BRE announced that this guide is intended for use by approving authorities such as building control bodies and fire safety officers in order to assist them in assessing water mist systems in residential buildings. The report can be downloaded from the BRE home page. The direct link to the report is http://www.bre.co.uk/filelibrary/Water_Mist_Guide_v2.pdf

Another report was published in December 2006 on "Sprinkler Effectiveness in Care Homes". Even though IWMA does not directly deal with sprinkler systems, comparisons with sprinklers are often made, and the work by BRE and the results with sprinklers might have implications as well for water mist systems and its suitability for care homes. Further studies will certainly follow. The URL to the report is http://www.bre.co.uk/filelibrary/Sprinkler_Effectiveness_in_Care_Homes.pdf