Banham Poultry is a British poultry producer based in Attleborough, Norfolk. It is the biggest employer in the mid-Norfolk constituency and has a turnover of around £100m per year.
Banham Poultry is committed to supplying fresh poultry products throughout the UK and has over 40 farms dedicated to providing roughly 650,000 birds per week to the Banhams processing site.
Bahnam plans to become more sustainable and as such have built a state of the art biomass plant at their Uphouse farm. The plant processes up to 1,200 tonnes of poultry litter and other waste per week and turns it into electricity for the national grid. Its electricity output is 5.5 megawatts at full capacity, enough to power over 7,000 homes.
When it came to a reliable fire detection system, Banham came to Eurofyre for advice on the best solution.
The Challenges
For a fire detection system to work reliably in the Biomass plant, there were several challenges that needed consideration:
- Large Open Spaces
The plant is a relatively large area. The fuel storage area alone is nearly 80m long and 25m wide. Large open spaces, areas with high ceilings, vertical thermal gradients and cross flows, can affect the development of smoke plumes and hinder the performance of more traditional detection types. - Movement
The building is in constant use, this means that detection types such as IR beam detection is ineffective and may cause nuisance alarms. - Contaminants
The air in the plant is likely to be polluted with contaminants such as dust, steam and insects. Many detection types would be affected by this and were, therefore, ruled out.
The Solution
Eurofyre called upon their extensive experience in the fire alarm industry and recommended that Banham installed Open Area Smoke Imaging Detection (OSID) to overcome the challenges and provide a reliable and cost-effective detection solution.
The System Provided
Two OSID Imager (OSI-90) and two OSID Emitters (OSE-SP) were used to provide three-dimensional area coverage. The emitters were placed at different heights within the field of view of the imager.
An OSID detection solution uses dual wavelength technology (infrared and ultraviolet) to provide reliable detection with high resistance to contaminants and obstructions such as dust, fogging, steam, reflections, sunlight, birds, insects and forklifts, thus reducing nuisance alarms.
OSID is simple to install and commission so is up to 70% quicker to install than traditional beam detection. It is also low maintenance saving even more time and expense. It has a high tolerance to vibrations, building movement and high airflow reducing false alarms and making it the perfect solution for Biomass plant applications.
Eurofyre
Eurofyre is committed to providing high-quality service through its technical and sales support. All personnel have extensive experience and expertise within the fire industry and are able to recommend and provide the most suitable, cost-effective and reliable detection system for any application, no matter how challenging.
For more information about OSID detection, or to discuss any of the other products that Eurofyre have to offer, please feel free to get in touch either by phone on +44 (0) 1329 835 024, by email to [email protected] or via the online enquiry form situated on our contact page.
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