Fire and Gas Systems Selection

The Importance of Fire and Gas Systems

Fire and gas detection technologies have a very important role to play in all critical industrial facilities and areas as it helps in ensuring safety in the production units by predicting and preventing numerous potential hazards. The fire and gas systems continuously monitor the environment for the presence of fire and gas hazards and trigger alarms to warn employees and people nearby in the event of an emergency.

Some of the major benefits to end users are:

• It helps in early detection of fire/gas, hence reduces the risk and consequences of an accidental event.
• Makes sure the working environment is safe for personnel.
• Offers sufficient safety devices and redundancy to detect, isolate and minimize uncontrolled releases of flammable and toxic liquids and gases.
• Helps in reducing the possibility for pollution of the environment from accidental spills, venting or flaring of hazardous materials.

Innovative newer technologies are coming up and are enabling the development of more efficient ways of detecting fires/gases in a plant or building. Overall, a fire detection system is an important safety measure that can help protect lives, property, and financial assets.

Fire and Gas Systems Selection Strategies

Understand and Incorporate Industrial IoT

End user organizations continue to face a shortfall of qualified personnel, as fewer new workforce entries perceive process automation, process engineering, chemical engineering, or similar technical fields as attractive career paths. Furthermore, it can take up to two years to train a new hire effectively in the field of automation, and once trained, it may be difficult to retain that individual. This “brain drain” is a major challenge for end user organizations, and they are looking at suppliers to take an essential role in filling this skills gap.

For a fire and gas system supplier, the situation spurs growth in more sophisticated forms of automation such as Industrial IoT. Forward-looking companies are investing to bring Industrial IoT to the field device level in the fire and gas systems market. Various Industrial IoT capabilities, such as remote monitoring and remote services, can help establish a more collaborative relationship between end users and suppliers. Industrial IoT solutions are now available for horizontal integration along the value creation chain, for consistent engineering from planning to maintenance, and for vertical integration from the field to the control level. 

Suppliers need to have a well-defined strategy as well as offerings in place. They need to have edge devices Industrial IoT ready, gateways to log and capture data from multiple sources, and the cloud to store and analyze data and to deliver meaningful and actionable results to customers.

End users can leverage the expertise of suppliers to help manage plant assets across their entire lifecycle; suppliers can go beyond being just automation providers, enhance their overall project revenues, and enjoy long-term revenue streams through customer service relationships.

Consider Implementing Wireless Technologies

ARC sees increased interest among fire and gas detector industry end users in applying wireless sensing technology in their installations. The availability of industrial standard protocols (WirelessHART and ISA100) is a huge catalyst; but some end users still take a “wait and see” approach in hopes that the wireless field communications standards will ultimately converge. ARC believes that this is most unlikely.

Competing standards and battery life limitations have slowed wireless adoption to a certain degree, but since wireless positioners offer greater installation flexibility in hard-to-reach parts of the plant and can greatly reduce wiring costs, ARC encourages end users to continue specifying wireless devices as their technical limitations are overcome.

Supplier Product and Solution Capabilities

End users need to evaluate a fire and gas detector company for not only its product portfolio, but also its solution capabilities for automation solutions. They should also evaluate a supplier for the important aspects of the application. These aspects include: How quickly can a more cost-effective route to an optimum solution be achieved with the supplier’s product portfolio and its experience in similar applications? Can a high level of integration be achieved? Will a solution be scalable? Does a solution allow end users to customize for their unique requirements very quickly and cost-efficiently? Does a solution offer forward compatibility for maximum investment protection? Does the supplier offer a consulting approach that will help view automation as a business enabler and help create a business case to justify the investments?