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Why the fire service needs a common language for PPV airflow
A positive pressure ventilator can have one airflow number on one datasheet.
That does not necessarily mean either number is fraudulent.
It does mean that airflow numbers generated by different methods should not be compared as though they measure the same thing.
And today, that happens far too often in the global fire equipment market.
For firefighters, procurement officers and apparatus committees, the result can be confusing. A fan independently tested under a recognized PPV standard can appear substantially less powerful on paper than another fan advertised with a much larger manufacturer-defined “open airflow,” “effective airflow” or similar value.
The units may both say m³/h or CFM.
The measurements are not necessarily equivalent.
That distinction matters, because positive pressure ventilation is a tactical firefighting tool. Equipment selection should be driven by engineering performance and operational requirements—not by whichever manufacturer finds a way to publish the largest number.
Performance should be the outcome of good engineering, not unbridled marketing.
This problem is not new
AMCA itself describes the PPV market of the 1980s and 1990s as having experienced a “Wild West era” of airflow performance claims. According to AMCA’s own history of Standard 240, exaggerated manufacturer airflow figures created a feedback loop in which fire departments began specifying increasingly large airflow values. Manufacturers, experienced firefighters and AMCA professionals subsequently collaborated on what became AMCA 240.
That history sounds remarkably current.
Today there are legitimate standardized PPV test methods, general fan standards, manufacturer-specific test procedures, calculated airflow values and undefined marketing terms existing alongside one another.
Problems arise when the resulting numbers are placed in the same comparison chart—or copied into the same tender specification—as though the test method does not matter.
It matters enormously.
Rosenbauer provides an unusually transparent illustration. For one FANERGY V16 configuration, its own website publishes:
53,280 m³/h — free air flow
4,910 m³/h — DIN 14963
5,981 m³/h — ISO 5801
Those are not three different fans. They are three descriptions of airflow associated with the same product under different approaches.
The lesson is not that one of those numbers must therefore be dishonest.
The lesson is simpler:
The unit does not define the measurement. The test method does.
No test can recreate “a structure fire”
There is no perfect PPV test.
There probably never will be.
Consider how many variables change from one structure fire to another:
building volume, floor plan, ceiling height, stairwells, open and closed doors, leakage, wind, exhaust opening size and location, fan setback, obstructions, temperature, elevation, attack line placement and even the changing geometry of the ventilation path during suppression.
A single-family house is not a warehouse.
A warehouse is not a thirty-story apartment building.
A thirty-story building is not a ship compartment.
No laboratory standard can reproduce every one of them.
But that is not what a comparison standard is supposed to do.
Its job is to hold enough variables constant that Fan A can be meaningfully compared with Fan B.
The same principle exists throughout engineering. An automotive dynamometer does not recreate every road. A pump test stand does not recreate every hose lay. A laboratory battery test does not recreate every emergency incident.
Standardization creates a common measuring stick.
AMCA 240: repeatability first
ANSI/AMCA 240 establishes a uniform laboratory method specifically for positive pressure ventilators, measuring airflow, pressure and related aerodynamic performance.
Its greatest strength is comparability.
The fan, doorway, setback, instrumentation and test procedure are defined. AMCA testing develops performance data across positive and negative pressure points; the traditional PPV rating is associated with the zero-backpressure condition. AMCA’s own technical material acknowledges the debate around that condition.
And that is a legitimate criticism of AMCA 240.
A structure being positively pressurized during active ventilation is obviously not always operating at zero pressure differential.
But AMCA 240 was never intended to duplicate every building. It was intended to create a repeatable laboratory comparison.
Just as importantly, “AMCA Certified” means more than a manufacturer saying that its own test is similar to AMCA. AMCA operates a Certified Ratings Program with publicly searchable certified products and third-party controls.
That is why terminology matters.
AMCA Certified has a defined meaning.
Tested according to AMCA 240 is a different statement.
Terms such as “AMCA Equivalent” do not constitute an AMCA certification category.
The fire service should know the difference.
Is AMCA only practical for American manufacturers?
That criticism is sometimes raised, but the situation is more nuanced.
AMCA is an international organization and maintains partner laboratories outside the United States, including CETIAT in France, as well as facilities or partners in Asia and the Middle East.
The 2022 revision of AMCA 240 also specifically changed doorway dimensions to permit laboratories in Europe to accommodate the test requirements—AMCA itself describes the change as supporting international laboratory capability.
So AMCA’s headquarters may be near Chicago, but the concept is not inherently American.
DIN 14963: move the test closer to the fireground
Germany took a different approach.
DIN 14963 attempts to test the complete ventilation task in a much more building-like environment.
Public descriptions of the German procedure show PPVs being evaluated in a prepared three-story training structure at the Infraserv fire training center in Burgkirchen, using a measurement method developed with Hochschule Coburg.
That has obvious appeal.
Instead of asking principally what the fan does in a laboratory doorway arrangement, DIN asks what happens when the ventilator is used to move air through a defined structure.
For battery-operated products, the current approach also considers sustained performance rather than merely initial peak output.
From a firefighter’s perspective, this feels much closer to the job.
But DIN has limitations too.
It is still one building geometry.
Its stair configuration, openings, internal resistance and flow path represent some structures better than others. A standardized three-story building remains a standardized three-story building—not every structure firefighters encounter.
And presently the specialized PPV testing infrastructure is concentrated in Germany. DIN therefore presents a different accessibility problem: an excellent operationally oriented test can still become expensive or difficult for manufacturers located on the other side of the world.
DIN Media identifies the current DIN 14963:2024-08 as the German standard for portable PPVs and notes that it was developed within DIN’s Firefighting and Fire Protection standards work.
For RAMFAN, the answer has been straightforward: our BrushlessPPV products have also been subjected to DIN testing.
We value the additional perspective.
We do not believe it makes AMCA irrelevant.
ISO 24660: an opportunity for a genuinely global language
This brings us to perhaps the most interesting development.
ISO 24660:2024 is specifically titled:
Fans — Determination of airflow propelled through an open personnel door by a positive pressure ventilator.
ISO describes it as a uniform laboratory method specifically for measuring airflow propelled through an open personnel doorway by a PPV. It also explicitly distinguishes the procedure from general ISO 5801 fan testing.
That distinction is important.
Years ago, RAMFAN advocated through AMCA leadership for development of a more globally applicable PPV standard. The concern was not simply whose existing test should “win.”
The concern was national fragmentation.
PPV is a relatively small equipment category even on a worldwide basis. Requiring manufacturers to perform separate expensive tests in the United States, Germany, France and elsewhere is not an efficient route to better equipment.
A global industry benefits from a global measuring language.
ISO 24660 is therefore very interesting to us.
But it has an immediate practical weakness: it is new.
During our current review, it remains difficult to identify a broadly recognized network of independent laboratories actively marketing ISO 24660 PPV testing. The standard exists; market awareness, certification infrastructure and convenient access still need to catch up.
A technically good standard only solves the problem if manufacturers can actually use it.
And what about ISO 5801?
ISO 5801 is a legitimate engineering standard.
But it is a general fan performance standard, not a test developed specifically around firefighter positive pressure ventilation.
That doesn’t make data generated under ISO 5801 wrong.
It means it answers a different question.
This is an important distinction throughout this discussion:
Different is not necessarily invalid.
Different simply means do not compare the numbers without understanding the methodology.
The difficult category: “open airflow,” “effective airflow” and manufacturer-defined testing
Manufacturers are free to perform their own engineering tests.
They should.
RAMFAN performs enormous amounts of internal testing that will never become a certification standard. That testing helps us understand impellers, motors, controllers, thermal behavior, setback, airflow shape and actual ventilation performance.
Proprietary testing itself is not the problem.
The problem begins when a manufacturer-developed number is presented as a universally comparable product rating without enough information for anyone else to reproduce it.
If a manufacturer publishes an airflow figure outside a recognized standard, a sophisticated buyer should be able to ask:
Where was it measured?
At what distance?
Across what area?
With what opening geometry?
At what pressure?
How was entrained air treated?
Which instruments were used?
What was the uncertainty?
Who performed the test?
Can another manufacturer repeat it?
If those questions cannot be answered, the number may still have internal engineering value.
It does not have much value for competitive procurement.
A basic physics check is useful too
Fans are not exempt from physics.
Electrical energy enters a motor and controller.
The motor produces shaft power.
That power drives an impeller.
The impeller produces pressure and velocity.
The airstream may then entrain additional surrounding air, and properly designed flow straighteners can influence jet velocity, direction and useful setback.
But no component creates energy.
That is why RAMFAN has increasingly emphasized motor power, battery voltage and battery energy capacity alongside airflow.
Those numbers do not replace an airflow test. A 700 W fan is not automatically a better PPV than a 600 W fan. Impeller efficiency, motor efficiency, diameter, blade geometry, flow conditioning and the complete system matter enormously.
But power is an excellent engineering sanity check.
If two fans have approximately the same diameter and one claims dramatically more usable airflow despite operating with substantially less available power, the correct response should not immediately be:
“That fan must be better.”
It should be:
“How were these two airflow numbers measured?”
Frequently, the answer is that they weren’t measured the same way at all.
Where the problem becomes dangerous: procurement
This issue becomes especially important in tenders.
A manufacturer publishes:
30,000 m³/h
A distributor copies it into a comparison.
Someone preparing a tender uses that datasheet as market research.
The tender eventually specifies:
Minimum airflow: 30,000 m³/h.
But no test standard is named.
Now a manufacturer presenting an independently measured standardized rating of 18,000 m³/h may appear noncompliant—even though its fan could equal or outperform the supposedly “30,000 m³/h” product when both are tested under the same procedure.
At that point the tender is no longer specifying performance.
It is specifying a number whose meaning was never defined.
This can unintentionally reward the least conservative marketing claim.
And because emergency equipment is being purchased, the consequences go beyond ordinary commercial competition.
The objective should be to equip firefighters with the tool that performs best for the intended tactic.
The industry does not need identical opinions. It needs identical rules.
There will always be arguments over AMCA versus DIN versus ISO.
Those arguments are healthy.
AMCA prioritizes laboratory repeatability and comparison.
DIN places more emphasis on performance through a representative building.
ISO 24660 offers the possibility of an internationally harmonized PPV-specific doorway test.
Each has strengths.
Each has deficiencies.
Standards should continue evolving as fire science, instrumentation, battery technology and ventilation tactics evolve.
But before arguing about which standard is best, the industry should agree on something more fundamental:
Competing products should be compared using the same test.
That means the method must be defined.
The setup must be reproducible.
The result should ideally be independently controlled.
And manufacturers around the world should have reasonable access to the test.
A bigger number generated by a different process is not a better result.
It is simply a different number.
Five questions every PPV buyer should ask
When reviewing a fan specification, start here:
For an AMCA Certified claim, the model can be checked against AMCA’s public Certified Ratings Program directory. AMCA itself specifically advises buyers to distinguish AMCA Certified from merely claiming performance “according to AMCA 240.”
For DIN, ISO or another standard, ask for the corresponding documentation.
For a proprietary number, ask for the test procedure.
A credible manufacturer should welcome the questions.
Where RAMFAN stands
We want to win the competition for PPV performance.
But we want it to be a fair competition.
RAMFAN engineers motors, motor controllers, battery systems, impellers, airflow straightening and complete PPV systems because we believe superior engineering should produce superior firefighting tools.
That belief only works commercially when customers can compare performance honestly.
We are not arguing that any existing test perfectly represents a fire.
None does.
We are arguing that transparent, accessible and repeatable standards are better than a self-refereed market where every manufacturer can invent its own measuring stick.
Firefighters deserve better information than that.
Manufacturers capable of real engineering should want the same thing.
Test the same. Compare honestly. Let the engineering decide.
