Low viscosity polar-solvent fire-fighting foam compositions
AssigneeCiba-Geigy Corporation
InventorsChang H. Jho, Yung Loh, Karl F. Mueller
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Abstract
Low viscosity, concentrated aqueous solutions of polysaccharide gums are prepared using certain water-soluble, anionic copolymers as viscosity reducers. These low viscosity polysaccharide gum solutions are used in the formulation of low viscosity polar-solvent fire-fighting foam compositions, especially "3.times.3" ("three by three") concentrates. The low viscosity compositions of the present invention are found to have exceptional stability as well as significantly improved fire-fighting performance.
Claims19
A reduced viscosity aqueous polar-solvent fire-fighting foam concentrate which comprises 1.0 to 3.0% by weight of a polysaccharide gum and a viscosity-reducing amount of 1.0 to 3.5% by weight of a water-soluble, anionic copolymer, wherein said copolymer has a weight average molecular weight of from 10,000 to 250,000 mass units and has units of the formula
- (M.sub.1).sub.k --(M.sub.2).sub.m --(M.sub.3).sub.n
- in which
- M.sub.1 is a radical of a vinyl mono- or dicarboxylic acid or a salt thereof,
- M.sub.2 is a radical of a water-soluble acrylamide, methacrylamide or vinylamide,
- M.sub.3 is a radical of one or more other copolymerizable monomers selected from the group consisting of acrylates, methacrylates, vinyl esters, vinyl ethers and styrene,
- k is 0.05 to 0.50 and is <m,
- m is 0.30 to 0.95 and
- n is 0 to 0.50,
- where k, m and n are the weight fractions of the respective monomers, and the sum of k+m+n is 1.00.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.