Integrated fire/gas detection system broadens monitoring capability

Consilium Marine has designed a range of alarms and more advanced sensors which can be incorporated into the fire and gas detection systems.

In an effort to improve safety onboard ships and offshore installations, Sweden's Consilium Marine has focused its development effort on fire and gas detection systems which have greater versatility, better control, and higher degrees of intelligence. Since 1990, it has supplied over 1,500 of its sophisticated CS3000 analogue, addressable fire detection systems, mainly to passenger ship owners. It is now seeking to interest the offshore market in its products, particularly its recently-launched combined fire and gas detection package controlled by a single, integrated safety management system (SMS).

Consilium's Sven Lansberg explained that the demand for more comprehensive monitoring of the conditions throughout ships has exposed the limitations of the established digital systems employing individually-wired sensors that can only register one of two states - on or off. Also, looking at it from the opposite angle, developments in sensor technology have resulted in devices capable of providing much more complex information. In turn, this has created a requirement for more sophisticated control systems to manage this data.

Addressable system

Responding to these drivers, Consilium was one of the first companies to market an analogue, addressable fire detection system based on a series of loops on which can be strung both simple alarms and more intelligent devices for measuring key parameters such as temperature and smoke level on a continuous scale. The company's standard CS3000 fire detection system can accommodate up to 64 loops each with up to 150 addresses.

It is governed by a Windows-based graphic PC presentation system that allows control of the total installation from a screen displaying a pictorial plan of the ship. Significantly, this central control system can also integrate inputs from other onboard safety and security networks.

The company believes it is unique in offering a gas detection system that operates along the same lines as its fire detection system. Owing to the greater power requirement of the gas sensors, the number of selected gas sensing devices that can be accommodated is limited to 10 on each of the 64 loops. The data from the gas sensors can be fed to the same controller as the fire detection system so enabling a fully integrated safety management system (SMS).

Consilium has installed two of the integrated fire and gas detection systems so far for offshore use, on the multi-purpose, ice-breaking supply vessel Botnica, and on the semisubmersible drilling rig La Morella, the latter operating in the Gulf of Mexico.

For more information contact Sven Lansbert, Consilium Marine. Tel: +46 31 710 77 00, Fax: +46 31 710 78 00, E-mail [email protected]