Fighting fires the good way is the Goodwyn A way
Fighting fires in the resources sector often requires boots on the ground deploying hazardous fire-retardant chemicals.
Industry has now learnt that this approach is not sustainable, nor best-in-class when it comes to environmental damage and human exposure, but the go-to emergency response was born out of necessity. Controlling then extinguishing the blaze took priority.
Now, a Woodside team, working for two years with a specialised engineering company in Perth, has devised a helideck system which is safer for humans and the environment. The first operating Woodside asset set to benefit from this modern, safer approach to firefighting is the North West Shelf’s Goodwyn A (GWA) platform off WA’s Pilbara coast.
Currently, the Woodside Emergency Response team is required to manually operate two helideck cannons, which send high-pressure foam streams to blanket the fire. The foam is not benign. It contains the toxic chemical fluorine which can be harmful to the environment and also to humans if they are exposed to high levels over long periods. Fluorine is present in Per- and Polyfluoroalkyl Substances (PFAS), better known as “forever chemicals” because of their extremely long lifespan. Thus, the global transition to non-PFAS fluorine-free foams.
Moreover, the current firefighting practice exposes the operators to the fire incident and the foam and impedes escape from the aircraft. With the environment and safety of our workforce our top priority, finding a safer form of firefighting was essential. But the challenge was developing a safer system on an existing facility that could use a fluorine-free foam.
And there was more. Though various approvals were in place for the equipment and the foam, there was no specific testing of the equipment with fluorine-free foams.
Challenge accepted.
With this uncertainty, rather than take the easy route, Woodside decided to conduct fire testing which revealed unacceptable performance and further development work required.
Senior Loss Prevention Engineer Andrew Spear, with the support of Project Engineer Supratik Debbarma, engaged Perth fire protection equipment specialist Incos Engineering to engineer a home-grown high-performance solution using innovative technology. The result was a unique design that incorporates a peripheral ring of high-capacity, pop-up spray nozzles which project a 360-degree foam blanket, covering the entire helicopter landing area irrespective of the fire location. The specialised nozzles, designed for fluorine-free foam, mitigated the environmental and health risks. Plus, the remote, unattended operation removes the risks that were faced by cannon operators.
"The result is a high-performance, fast response system that removes the operator from the line of fire and is gentle with its application to allow escape."
“We've also replaced the hard pipe with a fire and blast resistant Elastopipe, which allowed flexibility in design and installation on a 30-year-old facility,” adds Supratik.
Andrew says that under the supervision of DNV (the international registrar and classification society) full-scale ERGT (the Australian safety training provider) fireground testing has demonstrated extinguishment in under 10 seconds – comfortably inside the 30-second requirement for fire control.
In some respects, though, designing the solution was the easy part.
Since the original concept, it took the team and Incos Engineering more than two years of collaboration and testing to develop the final product which is DNV certified. “We were on this journey together,” Andrew notes, detailing exactly how long the journey took. “We set up at ERGT, and even in the Incos car park, testing up to three to four times a week and over weekends, challenging each other to finally overcome the foam performance issues.
“Through all the results, failures through to success, there was full transparency and honesty. It was working with Incos locally that made it happen, and now this knowledge stays in Perth.” Andrew believes Woodside now possesses a state-of-the-art firefighting system to be proud of. “I think we probably have the best helideck foam system out there, and I believe few could match the performance that we've proven,” he asserts.
The new fixed nozzle foam system will be installed on GWA later this year.
