COMPANY PROFILE
Firing on all cylinders The advance of fire detection tech
IT starts with ‘F’ and is arguably the four-letter word with most potential to strike fear into even the toughest waste management boss.
And they have good reasons to fear the word ‘fire’. Firefighters deal with an average of 300 fires at UK waste plants every year. As well as the risk to life, there’s the irony that a sector devoted to squeezing every last penny and use from waste instead faces an annual £16m bill in damage and losses due to outbreaks of fire.
... users can go further and opt for customised alarms which kick in at linked locations – such as the local fire station - whenever a probe encounters an area of concern.
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It’s not just the immediate mess, pollution and chaos that fire brings; as a few company directors have discovered, it can also lead to prosecution, fines and the risk of jail.
According to George Longmuir, the straight-talking boss of Freeland Scientific, preventing fire should be at the top of every waste manager’s ‘to do’ list. Yet, he adds, many still approach the notion of using the latest technology to tackle the issue with suspicion and uncertainty.
“The problem with many in the waste industry is that they’re scared of technology and data,” he says. “Big companies have compliance managers and that’s their world, they understand it.
“But mid-size and smaller companies are wary. They don’t realise technology and data is their friend; it helps their businesses. They can guide it and learn from it. It’s not the enemy.”
Longmuir is a soil scientist with a background in building the largest soil supplier in England and Wales, Freeland Horticulture. So, what does he know about waste management and fire?
By SANDRA DICK
George Longmuir
Having worked hand-in-hand with analytical chemist Dr Eric Crouch to develop solutions to monitor carbon dioxide, temperature, odours and moisture in compost, he saw the potential benefits of creating similar solutions for the then rapidly expanding waste sector.
The result was Freeland Scientific’s unique Wireless Temperature Probes with their deceptively clever smarTprobe technology system.
Designed specifically for the waste industry, the super-strength stainless steel temperature probes take highly accurate measurements which are communicated to removable high tech ‘black boxes’ attached to the equipment.
The information is then delivered wirelessly, in real-time, to the data storage system at Freeland Scientific’s Kent headquarters.
Back at the yard, a fire safety manager simply has to log on to view a personalised dashboard featuring reliable data collected from probes across their site. A series of on-screen dials and graphs show where waste piles are safe and where problems may be brewing.
The system doesn’t only offer ‘at a glance’ information about temperature levels. By capturing temperature data, businesses meet Environment Agency monitoring compliance requirements for Fire Prevention Plans, which includes analysing heating trends and mitigating the risk of fires.
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