Education one of the highlights at the NFPA show

LAS VEGAS—Education will be a robust feature of the 2014 National Fire Protection Association Conference & Expo. The number of education sessions grew to 150 last year and will remain at that level this year when the annual event is held June 9-12 at the Mandalay Bay Convention Center here.

Some sessions of particular interest to dealers and installers include ones titled “Detecting Residential Fires Faster At Lower Sensitivities With Fewer False Alarms;” “Smoke Alarms: Nuisance Source Characterization;” and “Fire Alarm Requirements of the Model Codes and How They Work With NFPA 72.”

There's also a session on water mist systems, titled “Water Mist - Effective for High Challenge Hazards, but What About Buildings?” Water mist, a suppression technology that uses less water than sprinkler systems and which started in the shipbuilding industry, has increasingly been used in the last few year in other applications, such as hospitals.

The session will be presented by Stuart Lloyd, principal fire protection engineer (Europe) with Zurich Risk Engineering U.K., and Zachary Magnone, senior engineer with Tyco Fire Protection Products.

“What I'm trying to in my presentation is provide some education on how these systems actually work,” Magnone explained to Security Systems News.

He said water mist systems can be misunderstood. For example, he said, “there's a belief that things aren't going to get wet because it's mist but in fact, in order for it to provide fire control, it has to wet things.”

He said he'll talk about the science behind water mist systems and tie that into the fire protection goals and characteristics of a particular application and also talk about the testing done that proves how effective water mist systems are for the right application.

Lloyd is expected to give some real life examples of applications where water mist systems are used, Magnone said.

This year's show also will feature NFPA's new president and CEO. Jim Pauley, now Schneider Electric's senior vice president of external affairs and government relations, will succeed NFPA president James Shannon on July 1. He'll be introduced to the more than 3,500 expected attendees at the show.