IR Flame Detectors

[paul4Z]

Hi all,

I am on an oil and gas facility and the question has been raised about whether my P40 laser scanner will affect or trigger the IR flame detectors in the area.

Through my experience it is extremely unlikely (impossible?) that the detectors can be set off by our scanner, but i would like to show evidence of that. My understanding is that the wavelength emitted by the P40 is too large to affect the flame detector sensors.

Can anyone provide any further info on this?

Many thanks,
Paul

[Matt Young]

I have tested these flame detectors in the past with a scanner right in front of them. This was in a lab conditions, in three different labs around the world. Nothing happened at all.

[ericwinkelman]

Short answer no.
Those detectors are tuned to detect water vapor or CO2 IR absorbance wavelength. Along with and/or UV. About 0.2 um, 3.5 um, and 4.3 um wavelength. And sometimes combined with visual detection. P40 datasheet states 1,550 nm [1.55 um]. They need to see sustained patterns or durations as well to avoid false detection. Beside all of that I would think that the flame detectors cannot respond fast enough to a pulse from the scanner.

[paul4Z]

Thanks very much for the input guys.

At the clients insistence we ended up running a test scan directly in front of an inhibited sensor and unsurprisingly it had no affect.

Paul

[Matt Young]

Good that you ran the test. It's always best to be safe. And now your client has a little extra confidence in what you are doing for them

[gordonired]

We scanned a gas plant last week that had an emergency shutdown. Alarm went off, flare stack was burning all sorts of stuff, shooting green flame 60 odd feet in the air. Plant was down for about an hour before they started bringing it back online again. All hands on deck. All of that was caused by a welder in one of the buildings, who set off a fire-eye. The operators were supposed to bypass it, but must have forgotten.

I've never set one off, and we use x330's and RTC360's. I as well, checked the wavelengths as mentioned by Eric prior to scanning, but it makes me sweat a bit every time I see one.

[Matt Young]

We scanned a gas plant last week that had an emergency shutdown. Alarm went off, flare stack was burning all sorts of stuff, shooting green flame 60 odd feet in the air. Plant was down for about an hour before they started bringing it back online again. All hands on deck. All of that was caused by a welder in one of the buildings, who set off a fire-eye. The operators were supposed to bypass it, but must have forgotten.

I've never set one off, and we use x330's and RTC360's. I as well, checked the wavelengths as mentioned by Eric prior to scanning, but it makes me sweat a bit every time I see one.

I have seen the damage done when the shut down doesn't work. It's nice to know that one did

[DelioPontes]

I had the same issue in my last job with a total station on an Oil Rig, even trying to explain to them the platform was fully covered with B&W targets from an old job done by another company...For decades Total Stations and Laser Scanners equipment has been used in this environment with no issues... and we point the total station to targets, not Fire/Gas alarms...

Does anyone have any documentation of the IR or the laser beam? cannot trig the alarms?

[TommyMaddox]

We always request hot work permits to cover our bases and address the non intrinsically safe behavior of the units. It also allows us to run electric drills on site for permanent reference installation. Getting the fire eyes bypassed is not an issue and we've done ~1000 oil and gas sites.