Waste Bunker Fire Monitoring - WASTE-SCAN

The Amager Resource Center (ARC) is a waste incinerator like no other. From the roof of the Waste to Energy facility, skiers and snowboarders wind their way down on green plastic mats from a height of about 80 meters, even in the summer. The city hall of the Danish capital, Copenhagen, is just five kilometres away. The location, which is almost in the heart of a European capital, as well as its use as a public leisure centre, shows how much confidence operators place in the safety of the ARC. An important component in the security concept is the WASTE-SCAN infrared monitoring system for early fire detection by InfraTec.

Many tons of waste are bunkered and processed every day in waste recycling plants. It is not uncommon for this to contain highly flammable materials. If ignition sources get into this storage area, for example during delivery, there is an acute risk of fire. Therefore, waste incineration plants are subject to the strictest fire protection requirements in order to prevent endangering the environment and local residents. For this reason, an extremely important preventive measure is the permanent monitoring of the waste bunker and, if necessary, the surrounding areas.

In the age of Industry 4.0, the demands on system suppliers are growing, not just with regard to the primary measurement and monitoring tasks, but also with regard to data networking and structure. To meet these demands, InfraTec has developed a platform‐independent internal data structure, which represents both the measurement and alarm data as well as the measurement sequences. Interfaces to control systems of leading suppliers, e.g. via TCP/IP in the PROFINET, Modbus, CC‐Link and many other versions, can be achieved flexibly and economically. The proprietary Gigabit Ethernet data interfaces of fast infrared thermography camera heads permit real‐time data analysis and evaluation.

Today's power and heating supply in the city of Bern is hardly imaginable without the Forsthaus energy centre (Energiezentrale Forsthaus ‐ EZF). This power plant combines a refuse incineration plant (KVA) with a wood heating power plant and a combined gas‐steam power plant. About 120,000 tons of waste are recovered in it annually. This results in about 360 GWh of electrical energy and 290 GWh of thermal energy. The Swiss company relies on the WASTE‐SCAN infrared monitoring system from InfraTec for the early fire detection.