Heat detectors, as the name suggests are the devices used to sense the rise in heat in a room and alert people so that before catching fire, necessary actions could be taken. In some cases, fires are caught too but before the fire gets out of control, heat detectors alerts people for emergency action. Heat detectors act like life savers everywhere they are installed and when it comes to marine ships, they become even more important as ships are always moving away from land in the sea and in case of emergency very limited actions can be taken. So, before things go out of hand, it becomes extremely important for the fire department on board to know that there are chances of fire in the ship.
If fire goes out of control in a moving ship, it would almost become impossible to save lives of people onboard which is why heat detectors are installed everywhere in ships. In this article, we will be seeing how these heat detectors work in ships and anywhere else in general.
Types of fires detected by heat detectors
Heat detectors are able to detect fires basically of two types
Low-energy fire
A low-energy fire smoulders, slowly consuming fuel and producing a lot of smoke. This form of fire, however, produces relatively little heat. Thermal detection may fall short and take too long to identify this fire since it produces more smoke than heat. The fire will have caused significant damage to the room in the ship by the time the heat sensor is activated.
High-energy fire
A high-energy fire is the second type of fire where the fuel is quickly consumed and the flames get bigger and bigger as the fire eats. Explosions or combustion can start these sorts of flames. Easy-to-burn materials like paper, hay, or dry wood are used to fuel these flames. This fire will immediately set off a heat detector which is the reason it is best detected with heat detectors and quickly alerts people in the surrounding.
Advantages of heat detectors in ships
As discussed earlier, heat detectors in ships are vital and save thousands of lives every year especially in passenger ships. They have many advantages and we will see them in brief below
Rarely raise false alarms–
One of the best things with heat detectors is that they are prone to false alarms so security people do not get false signals as heat detectors cannot be fooled easily. The working of heat detectors is based on the room temperature and until it finds a rise in the room temperature, the alarm will not be activated and no alarm will be raised.
Works perfectly in all areas of the ship–
Another major advantage with heat detectors is that they work perfectly in all the areas of the ship whether they are deep inside a room or on the floor. This is not the case with smoke detectors as they are not able to perform efficiently in the areas where there are dust and other particles present in the air
Can be used efficiently with water sprinklers–
Heat detectors have another major advantage of being used efficiently with water sprinklers and the major reason for it is its ability to be prone to false alarms. Just imagine if the heat detector installed raises false alarms and the water sprinklers attached to it gets activated and wets the whole floor or the room. Water sprinklers are extremely efficient in controlling the fire in the initial stages but if they get activated by false alarms, everything will be messy for no reason