Thermal imaging cameras for fire detection and prevention on board of MS Zaandam
Thermal imaging cameras for fire detection and prevention on board of MS Zaandam
Samenvatting
Cruise ship fires are not uncommon. Fire on board of the cruise ships is one of the most dangerous accident that can occur at any moment. The damage caused by fire is huge and can negatively affect the company’s reputation. There is a product on the market that can, according to the manufacturers, detect the fire at the earliest stage, namely thermal imagers, therefore the goal of this research is to investigate what is the additional value of thermal imaging to the current fire detection and monitoring system on board of MS Zaandam in order to provide an improved safety environment and an effective fire monitoring to reduce the fire risk.
In order to establish the most dangerous places on board of MS Zaandam and figure out what are the most frequent causes of the fire occurrences, firstly the analysis of the previous fires on board of other cruise ships over the last 20 years has been done. The results of the analysis were applied and compared with the present situation on board of MS Zaandam.
From the analysis follows that fire accidents on board of cruise ships were occurred due to following circumstances:
Fuel oil, thermal oil, hydraulic oil spraying onto the hot parts of the machineries.
Major electrical failures
Two fires were caused by thermal oil leakage into the burner furnace
Another three fire accidents were occurred in the galleys and all three were caused by overheating of the cooking fat in the fryers.
Also, some of the fires were caused by the human’s fault (welding in unauthorized places, irresponsible human activities…)
The places where fire can be caused by the fuel leakages onto the hot parts of the machineries were investigated with FLIR thermal imaging camera on board in order to establish the hotspots around. This has been done in order to establish what are the possibilities of fire occurrence in case of fuel oil sprays. Also, as much as possible information was assembled about all high voltage installations and machineries such as transformers, asynchrony and synchrony induction motors and high voltage switchboard in order to establish if thermal imaging camera can be used as an addition aid to the current fire detection systems. From analysis follows that places such as mooring decks, galleys, battery room, paint locker and laundries are fire hazardous as well, therefore, all these areas were investigated for present fire detection and prevention systems on board of MS Zaandam.
After investigation it seems that thermal imaging cameras have no any additional aid to the current fire detection systems on board of MS Zaandam. Places where fire can be caused by fuel oil sprays onto the hot parts of machineries are equipped with “Leakage alarm detectors”. Also, due to high background temperatures in comparing with average fuel oil temperature, thermal imaging camera will never sound alarm at the good time. All high voltage machineries and installations are equipped with temperature sensors. Fire risk in places such as paint locker, battery room and mooring decks is very low. During the last 15 years the fire has never been occurred in these areas, therefore it is not understandable to buy an expensive camera for the places where fire has never been occurred before.
No further research is required for determination of any additional aid of thermal imaging camera to the current fire detection systems installed on board of MS Zaandam.
Organisatie | HZ University of Applied Sciences |
Opleiding | Maritiem Officier |
Afdeling | Domein Technology, Water & Environment |
Partner | Holland America Line |
Datum | 2016-08-23 |
Type | Bachelor |
Taal | Engels |