Hi and welcome back to my blog, I hope you all had a great week and are looking forward to a break over Easter
Today I would like to talk to you about the changing face of fire detection, thankfully the rapid evolution of fire detection technology means more lives are being saved than ever before. We have moved away form the one-size-fits-all technologies of the past, a wide array of solutions now exist to provide the best possible protection in a range of environments.
It is now possible to detect any or all of the main indicators of fire, which are smoke, heat, carbon dioxide or carbon monoxide and even flame. However, while this increased level of sophistication represents a huge leap forward, it also presents consumers with a difficult decision-making process having to consider cost, scale, location, technology and fire regulations when choosing the system that best serves their particular purpose.
It used to be that alarms that used ionisation were the preferred option, but problems with disposal because of their radioactive parts are now banned in some countries. Instead optical smoke detectors have been adopted as the most common solution, however, the pervasive use of this technology has brought a new challenge – the growing number of false alarms. In a kitchen, for example, the use of these devices is a problem because of the heat that is generated as a result of normal cooking, in turn generating more false alarms.
Today, local facilities managers now have the responsibility for conducting their own fire risk assessments occasionally with a poor understanding of their specific needs and how to match those needs with the systems available so they opt for either for too many detectors, leading to issues with false alarms, or too few, leading to increased risk.
Finding ways to overcome the expensive and potentially disruptive consequences of false alarms is a focus for the fire detection industry and one answer may be to couple smoke detectors with carbon monoxide detectors, so that an alarm is only triggered when both smoke and carbon monoxide are detected. This multi-layered approach, which could additionally incorporate heat detection as a third indicator of danger and even electronic algorithms to make the system more intelligent, could be key to reducing those false alarms.
Innovation is responsible for solving a range of specific problems in fire detection. As discussed above, kitchens and heat detection has long been a challenge, whilst refrigerated areas present their own set of problems as smoke detectors can potentially mistake condensation for smoke and activate a false alarm. The answer is a system that draws air into a set of pipes and samples it in a laser chamber to identify smoke particles. With adjustable sensitivity and filters to ensure accuracy in specific environments.
The speed at which fires are detected is another area where technology development has enabled progress. If we look at warehouses, for instance, the historic risk was that a smoke detector situated on a wall over ten meters from the floor might take too long to pick up on the rise of smoke, by which time the fire may have spread at ground level. One solution is a beam detector, which sends a beam of infrared light to a reflective surface, approximately 100 meters away; an alarm is triggered if smoke interrupts the path of the beam. This technology is now undergoing further advances with the addition of a motorised beam detector that accurately aligns and can adjust for the barely perceptible structural shifts that affects buildings over time especially during times of drought.
Another trend in larger buildings is the creation of networks, where separate fire detection panels are linked to provide a complete solution that will not be put fully out of action by a single fault within one part of it. The data communicated between the panels can be fed into a building management system or a graphical package to give a broad view of activity for monitoring purposes.
Integrated systems such as these will ensure that fire detection systems become more accurate and more effective.
Til next time…