Thermal Imaging Camera Detects Potential Fires at a Very Early Stage

Thermal imaging cameras are used for a wide variety of applications. Thanks to their ability to measure temperatures in a non-contact mode, they can also easily be used for fire prevention. Any industry which has some type of storage area where goods or material are stored is susceptible to self combustion of material. Typical examples of this are storage of splint wood, batteries, waste recycling materials and coal.  All these applications have in common that there is a fundamental need to detect hot spots and prevent them from turning into a fire.

Orglmeister Infrarot Systeme is an innovative company in Germany that manufactures and markets the Pyrosmart system, a camera system that can be used for fire prevention. The system will detect hot areas that can lead to a fire at a very early stage. "The Pyrosmart system contains a thermal imaging camera and a daylight camera.", explains Mr. Orglmeister, General Manager of the company. „At the heart of the system is a Flir A615 thermal imaging camera."

"The system can scan a large area. All the separate thermal images that are taken are stitched together by our patented Abirovision system and a continuously updated panorama image is created. By combining all the 640 x 480 pixels images created by the camera we can build a large thermal image that has up to 9600 x 9600 pixels. The Pyrosmart system can be pressurized so that it can be installed in extremely hot and dusty environments or at any other location." The system has an IP network connection and an alarm output and needs only a 24 V connection to be up and running. The entire system is also extremely easy to control thanks to a touch screen interface.

Detecting Fires
"The Flir A615 is an ideal instrument to integrate into our system thanks to its ability to measure temperatures" continues Mr. Orglmeister. "It can easily detect hot spots which are a first indication that a fire might break out. The user can easily set various types of rules, so if one of these is violated an alarm will automatically go off." These rules can be different and adapted to the industry in which the system is being used. The easiest rule would be for the system to detect a temperature that is above a certain value set by the user.

In other cases, for example in a waste incineration plant, a rule could specify that the system just monitors for a temperature increase if no new waste is currently being added. "But this rule would be useless in a recycling plant where waste is being added and turned continuously by loaders. The exhaust pipes of these vehicles cannot be considered as a hot spot, nor can them appearing in the image be considered as a temperature increase so, thanks to intelligent algorithms, the Pyrosmart system can distinguish between the hot exhaust of a vehicle and the early stages of a fire.

Point to Shoot
"Detecting a hot spot that can lead to a fire is one thing. Preventing it from becoming a real fire is another", says Mr. Orglmeister. "It is not always so easy that you can send someone out with a hose to cool down the problem area. Therefore many users and also insurance companies asked us for a system that can not only detect hot spots but one that can cool them down immediately as well. The Pyrosmart system takes xyz coordinates and sends them to a mobile water spray extinguishing system. So a typical situation would be that one of the user-defined rules set in the system is violated and an alarm is generated.

The xyz coordinates of the hot spot are sent to the mobile water spray extinguishing system which turns to the direction of the hot spot and starts to put water on it so that it is cooled down and the danger of a fire is eliminated. The cold water spray is tracked automatically by the Pyrosmart system to the exact location of the hotspot. This procedure is patented by Orglmeister Infrarot Systeme. The fire monitor can also be operated manually with a joystick, a necessary feature so that the system can be overruled by firemen. Thermal imaging cameras like the Flir A615 can also see through smoke so that the system will help the firemen to see through the smoke to where the fire is and where they are spraying the water.

Hot or Not
The system can be used in a wide variety of situation: various systems have been installed in waste bunkers and waste incineration plants as well as at various locations where cokes are produced. During the cokes production process, coal is heated and needs to be cooled down again afterward with water in order to prevent the entire coal pile burning up. It can happen, however, that certain parts of the coal pile are not being cooled down enough. This means that the coal is still burning, with a corresponding loss of the final product. By using the Pyrosmart system to look at the cokes, hot areas that have not been cooled down sufficiently can be immediately identified and, in combination with a fire monitor, cooled down.

The system also ensures that no more water is sprayed than absolutely necessary and only on places where it is needed. Some cokes plants succeeded in bringing the amount of water in their cokes down from 8% to 2 %. This means that they are able to deliver more of a better quality product. Taking into account the extra income that is generated from this, the investment in such a system is relatively small.

"Water is sprayed exactly where it is needed and nowhere else. This is in contrast to sprinkler systems that can damage the entire stock of a warehouse. A system taking full advantage of the thermal imaging capabilities of the Flir A615 just sprays water where the fire is breaking out. The cost of a fire is often underestimated; there is not only the loss of material but, even worse in some cases, loss of life. A Pyrosmart system is a small investment to avoid all this", concludes Mr. Orglmeister.