How the source of Fire could be identified in a fully smoked room to use the fire extinguisher accurately?

seeing as how the average person doesnt own an IR camera at 10-25000 a piece, and also assumeing that they dont have the firefighting equipment and SCBA gear which would run them another 2000, they would have to crawl on the ground where the smoke is thinnest and then be able to see and put out the fire. which is fire; its bright, and you can see it.

The fire will be radiating energy, we usually see visible light and feel the heat being radiating, but the fire's radiaton is very spread spectrum. Through the smoke you could both sense the heat being given off but also energy such as infrared light. This could be detected to give someone using a fire extinguisher the location of the fire.

The design of CO2 System shall be as inaccordance to NFPA 12., whereby you have 4 methods of design and installation :

1. Total Flooding System

2. Local Application system

3. Pre-engineered system

4. Hand-hose line system

In the case maybe if you are dealing with an enclose surface eg. switchboard room you may use option 1 with deep seated design. You won't be able to directly apply to the fire, but the CO2 that realeased in this design shall act like a blanket (buoyoncy force) to segregrate the hot surface and Oxygen.

Afterall, if you are desingning for Data center where you have lots of Server Rack, you cannot use option 1 as this is real expensive and not good for normally occupied area. As such, option 2 will be the best option... to design the CO2 directly purge into the server cabinet upon detection of smoke and heat using smoke detector and heat detector respectively.

In your example, since the room is already smoked, you may install PYROGEN Gas system to all your electrical switchboard... as pyrogen gas is as small as CO2 45kg cylinder can put off 8 Swichboard cabinets. Mode of operation is using a fuse link whereby once heat detected, pyrogen gas will purge. More effective and very less cleaning needed.

IM or email me if you would like to know more on how to design a proper fire fighthing system for your application effectively without buying the infra camera or so on.

If you had an IR (Infrared) camera you'd see the source of the fire and not the smoke. That is Infrared cameras can "see through" smoke and fog.

An infrared detector (or infrared camera) should show the hottest point hence the core of the fire.

infrared detectors can be used. cos they sence heat and not light