Among water-soluble liquids, the most representative group in terms of production volumes is the group that includes ethyl, methyl, and isopropyl alcohols. Considering this fact, these are stored in large capacity tanks (up to 50 thousand m3). The issue of fire suppression for such liquids has not been addressed so far. No cases of successful fire suppression in storage tanks with such liquids have been registered. The practical use of reduced volumes of foam supply intensity and inefficient supply methods are the cause of it. Water-soluble liquid fire suppression is studied using small-scale models from 0.41 to 4.67 m2. The results of fire suppression of ethanol, methanol, and isopropyl alcohol obtained by different research groups have been analyzed. To transfer the values of foam supply flow rate to fire suppression of real tanks, using scaling factors whose values vary from 1.21 to 3 is required. Their substantiation is provided in the standard UL 162. Apart from the scaling factor, using the safety factor equal to 2.3 has been proposed. The value of this factor has been adopted by Russian methodological documents. The recommended values of standard intensity when using the foam of low multiplicity and the «soft» method of supply for alcohols vary from 0.41 to 0.83 l/(m2∙s), whereas the specific flow rate for fire suppression of self-expanding gas-aerosol-filled foam is within the range of 30–60 l/m2. Density, pressure of saturated vapors, and heat of combustion of water-soluble liquid significantly affect the values of flow rate characteristics of fire-suppression substance supply.
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