Fire safety is one of the most important aspects in the development of our products. Luckily fire only occurs sporadically. Integration of our products in an HVAC environment and in normal circumstances is therefore just as important.
Rf-Technologies aims at keeping the total “cost of ownership” of the products as low as possible.
To improve this “cost of ownership”, we try to minimize the impact of fire resistant dampers on the normal functioning of the ventilation installation.
We try this on the one hand by specifically focussing on the air-tightness of the products and on the other hand by keeping the pressure loss in the ventilation duct as low as possible.
Air-tightness
A study program within the scope of the European Safe-Duct program has shown that, in Belgium and France, up to 20% of the supplied air gets lost through ventilation ducts that are not airtight. The aim of every ventilation system is to guarantee an acceptable air quality in every location. If part of the air does not reach its goal by an inadequate air-tightness of the ducts, this undoubtedly results in a decreased air quality in certain locations. Leaking outgoing air ducts are after all an important source of air pollution.
To compensate this deficiency, the air flow rate is often increased. In its turn, this increases the installation and energy cost. A cautious assessment shows us that a 1% leak causes a 3% increase of the energy costs.
Rf-Technologies makes a great effort to produce fire resistant dampers which meet these high standards of air-tightness. Therefore Rf-Technologies invested in an own laboratory in which the air-tightness of the fire resistant dampers is tested on a permanent basis according to the European Norm EN1751.
On a short to medium long term, Rf-Technologies only wants to put products with air-tightness class C (the highest category) and air-tightness class B on the market.
Minimal pressure loss
With every new product concept we aim to minimize the product parts that are inevitably present in the air duct. The decrease of pressure loss also has an important positive impact on the installation and energy cost of the ventilation environment;
Rf-Technologies tunes new fire resistant dampers as such that the pressure loss caused by the damper blade is strongly reduced. This is possible thanks to the improvement of thickness and shape of the damper blades and the minimization of mechanical transmissions or stops within the tunnel. Especially with products of smaller dimensions this has a very favourable impact on the caused pressure loss.