Examination of Compressed Air Foam (CAF) For Interior Firefighting NIST Technical Note 1927

This January 2017 report covers a study designed to investigate limitations of compressed air foam (CAF) relative to water when used for interior structural firefighting. Full scale fire experiments were conducted over a period of years from 2012 through 2015. The experiment arrangements and results are presented in this report. These results from both the gas cooling and the suppression of residential scale from fires showed the effectiveness of water and CAF hose streams to be similar. This study, conducted by the National Institute of Standards and Technology, was part of a larger research project led by California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo in collaboration with the Montgomery County (MD) Fire and Rescue Service. It was supported in part by a Department of Homeland Security/Federal Emergency Management Administration Assistance to Firefighters Research and Development Grant.