Content provided by Ziamatic
The road is changing, and so are the vehicles on it. According to a report from the International Energy Agency, sales of electric cars hit 6.6 million in 2021, more than tripling their market share from two years earlier.
While electric vehicles may be better for the environment, they pose critical challenges for firefighters. Ziamatic’s new Vehicle Cooling Units could be the answer to those challenges, with 36” and 72” options now available.
“Ziamatic has designed a product that can cool areas of a vehicle, and it requires less manpower and less water flow when in use,” Keith Creely, vice president of Ziamatic, said. “Our system is also compact, simple, and needs less room when storing.”
Fires in electric vehicles often take crews longer to handle than those in internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles. Some electrical vehicle fires have lasted several days. For fire crews, electrical vehicle batteries are hard to reach, difficult to cool down, and the energy created with thermal runaway can easily re-ignite or spread from cell to cell.
“It is said that copious amounts of water should be applied to an area of an EV battery pan if high temperatures are present. This requires a firefighter to apply water to that area while the car is lifted slightly for accessibility,” said Creely.
But what if there isn’t an endless supply of water? Ziamatic has worked directly with local fire companies and learned how they plan to approach these situations.
“We quickly realized there is a lot to learn about EV issues, but we feel we have designed a cooling unit that can help in many ways to create what may be a safer, easier way of approaching compromised EV batteries,” Creely said. “At the same time, we feel this same unit frees up a firefighter to accomplish other tasks. Once set in place, our new cooling unit can be left to continue cooling on its own.”
Ziamatic’s new Vehicle Cooling Units adapt to conventional fire hoses using a NHT 2.5 double-female coupling (sold with). They can slide underneath vehicles with a ground clearance of less than four inches and still be very effective. Ziamatic’s 36” unit uses as little as 40 gallons of water per minute. After more than a year of designing and testing, what may be the most cost effective and efficient Vehicle Cooling Units are now available.
“Our Vehicle Cooling Unit was designed to address concerns of water consumption and access to the area heating up. We have heard of a few added ideas that departments have in mind to utilize this system for concerns not related to EV vehicles,” said Creely. “Although we are promoting the VCU product line as a cooling unit, we are excited to see what the industry does with this product and how many different ways it is implemented in the fire industry.”
Ziamatic Vehicle Cooling Units come in two different models:
VCU-36
- 40-60 G.P.M.
- 4’x8' Coverage at 5.5" Vehicle Ground Clearance
- 83 Spray Holes
VCU-72
- 84-119 G.P.M
- 7’x8' Coverage at 5.5" Vehicle Ground Clearance
- 166 Spray Holes
Visit the Ziamatic website to learn more.