Rapid and reliable fire detection in industrial facilities - AVIOTEC 8000i IR

Flames and smoke contaminate food. Thus, preventing fires in food factories is essential. Despite this, food processing plants have a high fire load at every stage of the food production process. Conveyers that transport food at high temperatures and lines of fried goods that contain thousands of liters of hot grease can ignite easily. Common sources of ignition in food factories include sparks from malfunctioning electronic equipment and friction from conveyers that are out of alignment. To make matters worse, the risk of fires spreading rapidly is also high due to airborne substances and powdered ingredients like flour that can cause violent dust explosions when ignited.

Storage in the food industry is also a challenge as many packaging materials such as paper, plastics and films are highly combustible. Once a fire starts, flames can contaminate storage areas and the smoke produced can contaminate food in surrounding stores as well.

Thus, a solution to quickly detect and pinpoint fires is essential to prevent wide scale food contamination and equipment damage. Additionally, as hygiene is an important factor when handling food, false alarms need to be minimized to ensure that food is always kept fresh by being handled in the most efficient way.

Paper mills are a hotbed for fires due to the materials being handled and the machinery used throughout the production process. To find out how AVIOTEC can improve safety in the paper and pulp industry, visit out dedicated paper and pulp industry webpage by clicking here.

Whether cotton or polyester, textile factories process a range of textile fibers that share one thing in common, they are all highly combustible. Textile dust and excess fibers, a byproduct of textile production, are also a fire hazard as they are often airborne and abundant in production areas.

Typical processes in the textile industry such as spinning, carding and weaving involve techniques where materials are processed on machines that are moving at high speeds. When these machines malfunction, sparks due to electronic failures and friction due to mechanical faults are common and provide the perfect source of ignition.

Textile factories are therefore a hotspot for fires as flammable materials have a good chance of coming into contact with ignition sources. Moreover, with all the textile dust produced, traditional fire detectors may not register an alarm due to blockages. Thus, an innovative solution that can detect the source of fires quickly in challenging environments is needed to keep employees safe and to prevent business interruptions.

The risk of explosions in chemical factories is particularly high as the substances being processed are often flammable. These substances also take many forms, each posing unique safety challenges.

Solids are a fire hazard when in powder form. This is because powders can easily be dispersed into the air especially when being poured from a storage container into a machine. Over time, with poor ventilation, powders slowly build up a layer of airborne dust and can combust rapidly when in contact with an ignition source.

When dealing with liquids, leaks are inevitable. In chemical plants, the ignition of flammable leaked liquids can result in widespread damage as liquid leaks are often more extensive than initially thought out to be. Similarly, to liquids, gas leaks are also a hazard. Unfortunately, gas leaks are harder to identify and the extent of gas leaks may not be obvious as gasses are often invisible. Thus, any ignition in a chemical plant can cause a fire to spread quickly.

With machines that have heavy-duty electrical motors and equipment that is used to heat and cool chemical substances, malfunctions can start a fire and cause any of the substances above to ignite. Chemical factories therefore need robust fire detection systems that can detect fires early and pinpoint exactly where the threat is to prevent widespread fires.