Data Centers Breathe Easier With Less Oxygen 392
PC World is reporting that some companies are looking at a new method of fire protection in their server closets, oxygen-deprivation systems.""Wood stops burning when the oxygen content falls to 17 percent and plastic cables between 16 to 17 percent, said Frank Eickhorn, product manager for fire detection at Wagner Alarm and Security Systems GmbH in Hanover, Germany. Wagner makes electric compressors that use a special membrane to remove some of the oxygen from the outside air, a system the company calls OxyReduct. The excess oxygen is exhausted, and the remaining nitrogen-rich air is pumped inside the data center."
It would still smoulder and smoke (Score:5, Insightful)
You are not supposed to be working all the time in the serverroom anyway, it's much too noisy in there and your 200Watt of heat production would be much better used to warm your office.
In other words: you would have noticed that fire too late anyway if you had to rely on the amount of smoke coming from it.
Poisonous exhaust (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I call bullshit (Score:3, Insightful)
I saw this comment and saw that someone else had already explained this to someone else that had asked the same stupid question. But since you were modded up to +5 I guess I'll deal with this instance. The air in the data center at sea level with 14% oxygen has approximately the same amount of oxygen per cubic foot as the rarefied air at ~6,000 feet. Why? Because the air is denser. Note that TFA never claims that it is the same percentage of oxygen, only the same amount. These words mean entirely different things.
If you are a native english speaker, shame on you! You have no command whatsoever of your native language.
If you are not a native english speaker, I highly suggest that you return to your studies, because this language is stupid and you need more help with it. Don't feel bad - it happens to people of all countries who are trying to speak it. Including those who grew up speaking it.
Re:But... (Score:5, Insightful)
AFAIK, the percentage of oxygen is no different at altitude than at sea level, it is just the pressure of atmosphere is lower. So if I had to wager a guess, I would say that combustion is dependant on concentration of O2 per mass, and respiration is dependant on concentration of O2 per volume, which is why a smaller percentage of O2 has a greater effect on combustion then on respiration.
Re:But... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Not passing out the whole point of this (Score:1, Insightful)
So, yes, you'd want to still maintain your fire suppression system, but hopefully with a reduced oxygen enviroment, if there is a spark, the fire cannot even catch alight and there's no need for the big expensive fire-suppression system to go off.
Re:They won't pass out- they'll die. (Score:4, Insightful)
I *realize* they aren't talking about O2 free rooms. Perhaps I should have picked a better article closer to nitrogen asphyxiation then one advocating it's use for the death penalty. My bad.
I was *trying* to point out that you don't want to get too carried away by 'inerting' areas because there are consequences- while you may become sleepy and tired from CO poisoning, or disoriented, hot, and suffocating from CO2 poisoning, people will not experience warning symptoms with N2 poisoning- they'll simply keel over. That's it- zip, nada- I'm all for fire-safing server rooms (GO HALON!). No motive to discredit this technology- and no interest IN discrediting it. Just simple information that your average person might not have known about...
And you'll get into trouble with the N2/O2 becomes about 95%- there's not enough O2 partial pressure (Depending on your lung capacity and general health) without the addition of helium- that N2 has to dissolve somewhere, too...
Re:This was great for non-smokers on a submarine. (Score:3, Insightful)
Sorry, but that fact is not relevant here. See many other postings regarding that in this story. Having a partial pressure of oxygen "equivalent to 10,000 feet" but with a "normal" atmospheric pressure, translates to an oxygen percentage of about 15%. The total atmospheric pressure at 10K ft. is 10.1 psi. Normal air at that altitude is still 21%, so things burn normally as you irrelevantly pointed out. Big whoop. Some people (especially young Navy kids) can function quite well at 10K ft. equivalent for quite a long time. (150 kPa O2 vs 210 kPa O2 partial pressure). Others will suffer the effects in the article you linked to. YMMV. But cigarettes won't stay lit in 15% O2 unless you're dragging really, really hard. Believe me, it works. Not that you would want to go through this experience for long though. Headaches were common, and the tobacco junkies quite unbearable. The A-gangers got the O2 generator working after a few miserable days. Go put yourself on the dink list, skimmer!
Please read a physiology textbook. (Score:3, Insightful)
Not really. It takes about 20 seconds for blood from the lungs to reach the brain. If the blood is desaturated, you'll pretty much pass out instantly when this happens.
N2 is inert. It is not poison. The worst it will do is displace oxygen, giving about the same effect as holding your breath.
No. No. No. It's absofrigginlutely not the same. If you hold your breath, the blood can still take up oxygen from the air in your lungs, and the partial pressure of oxygen in the air in your lungs drops very slowly.
If, on the other hand, the gas in your lungs contains no oxygen (i.e. the partial pressure of oxygen is zero), then the blood will actually release oxygen instead of taking it up while travelling through the lungs, effectively becoming desaturated.
Roughly twenty seconds after you start breathing a gas mixture without oxygen, desaturated blood will reach your brain and it's lights out. Period.
Re:They won't pass out- they'll die. (Score:3, Insightful)
To quote http://www.csb.gov/safety_publications/docs/SB-Ni
"Breathing an oxygen deficient atmosphere can have serious and immediate effects, including unconsciousness after only one or two breaths."