Profile

Foamclean Ltd Managing Director Gary McDowall has spent the past twenty years in the fire fighting chemical industry. He has been involved with some of the new developments in foam technology during that time. These include the introduction into the UK of some of the fire fighting techniques used throughout Europe, utilising fluorosurfactant-free foams (FSFF) for use by the Fire and Rescue Service.

Gary has been responsible over the past three years for the development of the 'Perfluoro Filtration Extraction Cleaning and Treatment' system known as perfFECTTM. This process and filtration system will assist the fire protection industry to deal with some of the damaging chemical waste it produces year on year during servicing and at major incidents such as the Buncefield disaster with its inevitable large volume of contaminated fire-water run-off.

The very scenario seen at Buncefield was predicted during Gary's presentation to the 'Foam Under Fire' seminar at the Reebok Centre in December 2004 and how this new process development could help deal with a similar post-fire event.

If we can learn anything from history, events such as Buncefield will happen again in the future. Unfortunately our industry never seems prepared for the consequences of having to clean the fire-water by removing contaminants before releasing it to our water systems

The necessity of having to use such a process to deal with this waste has stimulated interest from countries where protecting their environment is seen as a priority, not as a secondary issue. Organisations in Sweden, Norway, Germany, Holland, the Republic of Ireland and Australia are all considering how to use perfFECTTM as an integeral part of the solution to deal with spent foam.