PROMOTIONAL FEATURE – LANDFILL MONITORING
Early warning response FLIR’S THERMAL IMAGING CAMERAS HAVE BEEN HELPING DYNAMIC WASTE FACILITIES IN AUSTRALIA AND AROUND THE GLOBE TO REDUCE THEIR FIRE RISKS.
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wedish energy company Jönköping Energi, based in Torsvik, has been transforming waste into district heating – a common practice in the Scandinavian country. The critical issue for any waste operator is detecting fire risks as efficiently and quickly as possible to control fires and prevent them from spreading. Its of particular importance for sites maximising uptime at high volumes, as Jönköping Energi transforms up to 145,150 tonnes of waste per year, or 18 tonnes per hour, into heat and electricity. The district heating is enough to power 25,000 households and has been up and running since 2006. It provides about 90 per cent of district heating demand and 20 per cent of electricity used in the surrounding area. According to Magnus Olsson, Plant Manager at Jönköping Energi Torsvik, preventing and controlling fires in the waste bunker is not only a matter of safety, but also of economics. “We have trucks coming in bringing in waste from the surrounding area, but also from different places in Europe. This waste is then dumped in a waste bunker and is mixed by means of automatic cranes, waiting
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“Spontaneous combustion from biological products or other heat sources is a continuous threat and something that we need to keep an eye on 24/7.” Magnus Olsson Plant Manager at Jönköping Energi Torsvik
to be transported into the boiler,” Magnus says. These waste piles can be a dangerous mix. “Spontaneous combustion from biological products or other heat sources is a continuous threat and something that we need to keep an eye on 24/7,” he says. Aside from the environmental consequences and obvious safety risks for people at the plant, a fire outbreak in a waste bunker can be a costly affair. “If a fire should break out, we need to shut down the plant immediately. These shutdowns cost us quite a lot of money, up to half a million Swedish Crowns a day. That’s why it is important to have a reliable early warning system that detects fires as soon as they originate,” he says. Jönköping Energi published a tender in 2016 for the implementation of an
early warning fire detection system. The tender was awarded to the Linköping-based company Termisk Systemteknik, a distributor of FLIR thermal imaging cameras and provider of fire detection systems with FLIR cameras since 2010. FLIR and equipment supplier Industrial Monitoring Control have worked with largest operators in the Australian waste and recycling industry to develop off-the-shelf early fire detection solutions for landfills, transfer stations, materials recovery facilities and recycling sites. Thermal imaging cameras are now a widely accepted tool to detect fires and potential fire hazards at the critical early stages. Permanently installed cameras, operating in harmony with conventional detectors, offer a range of significant benefits over standard technologies. These include the ability
