Fluorine-free AFFF Replacement

Aqueous film-forming foams (AFFFs) have been used for decades by public, commercial and military firefighting organizations to fight hydrocarbon fires. AFFFs containing fluorinated surfactants have superior firefighting capabilities, but many are classified as persistent, bio-accumulative, and toxic. As a result, new, reliable, environmentally-friendly, fluorine-free firefighting foam concentrates for use on class B liquid pool fires are needed. In addition to being environmentally friendly and non-toxic, the new agent must provide the same level of fire protection as fluorinated AFFFs. In response to this need, TDA Research, Inc. (TDA) has developed a fire-fighting foam concentrate (3%) that does not contain fluorosurfactants or any fluorinated compounds (i.e., is fluorine-free), is compatible with current fire-fighting hardware and fire-fighting protocols, and meets the fire performance requirements of AFFF when measured with a Type III Fire Test for Class B fires as described in Section 10 of the Standard UL 162 (Underwriters Laboratories, Inc. Northbrook, IL, Eighth Edition, February 23, 2018). In this project, TDA will optimize a Type 3 (3%) fluorine-free foam (F3) replacement for AFFF and scale-up production of the formulation in order to support large scale fire testing using conditions found in MIL-F-24385F.