Ensuring reliable fire safety for automotive parts manufacturing in Brazil

Umicore is a global circular materials technology company. Their premises in Americana, a metropolitan area of São Paulo in Brazil, comprises a large industrial site serving their Catalysis business unit, including operations for Automotive Catalysts, Fuel Cell and Stationary Catalysts and Precious Metals Chemistry. Despite making a valuable contribution to a circular economy by repurposing resources for a more sustainable supply chain, the actual materials handled on such sites are highly flammable and risk the emission of toxic vapors in the event of a fire. The sheer size of the Umicore site in Americana, plus the distance between buildings, makes the installation of a consistently reliable fire protection system a huge challenge.

One area is dedicated to testing catalytic converters. This involves car motors being switched on and left running for long periods. As processes like this automatically create heat and fumes, traditional heat and smoke detection methods either create excessive false alarms or pose a danger of delayed alarms. Yet rapid response times are vital in such an environment should a real fire alarm be raised due to the volatile and flammable substances being handled. An intelligent solution was clearly required to differentiate any matter generated through Umicore’s regular business operations from flames and smoke produced by a fire

Hence, the Bosch UEZ 2000 panel and Magic Sens detectors (400 Series) were installed to monitor these spaces at the Americana plant in 2004. Thanks to the Magic Sens detectors, a 95%+ reduction in false alarms was possible as the different sensors can determine whether there is a real fire risk or, for instance, heat and fumes are generated by motor testing activity. This means a fire alarm is only sounded when all non-fire-related criteria have already been rapidly evaluated and eliminated as the cause for any critical values.

Since then, the site was expanded continuously to include new buildings which also required a high standard of fire safety coverage. Hence, in 2019, David Fontes, Industrial Safety Supervisor at Umicore, contacted the Bosch Regional Account Manager in São Paulo to address the need for reliable monitoring across all of their buildings – plus any new areas to be developed in the future. A Bosch expert in the region, Henrique Silva, assessed the site, the Bosch fire safety solutions which were installed two decades ago, and the current safety hazard scenarios and combinations.

Since the initial installation at Umicore, Bosch had achieved many technological advancements in modular, scalable fire protection systems. Therefore, the newer FPA-5000 panel was installed in place of the UEZ 2000 panel to support the project’s current needs even more efficiently. In addition, AVENAR 8000 keypads were installed on the site.

In the new buildings and enhancements, the Magic Sens’ successor model was installed – the AVENAR multi-sensor detectors which also detect the values of different phenomena like heat and fumes simultaneously. The detectors can also now be monitored and checked for maintenance requirements at a distance, as the Bosch Fire Alarm System was equipped with Remote Services in 2023 to support the maintenance process. Operators now receive instant messages on the status of the system on their networked devices, wherever they are.

Besides precise fire detection, the evacuation procedure was enhanced across the whole site between 2021 and 2022, allowing for combined fire detection and voice evacuation systems via Smart Safety Link. This ensures personnel are clearly instructed to exit the multiple buildings safely if a real fire is detected.

The results of the advanced fire protection system were even better than expected. David Fontes praised the Campinas-based system integrator’s expert knowledge of Bosch products which facilitated the smooth transition from the legacy systems to the new, customized and cutting-edge Bosch technology. The new modular system is also completely scalable, so any site extensions will also be covered by Bosch fire protection technology to the same high standard.