Engineering Quality and Reliability

The protection of onshore and offshore hydrocarbon process and handling facilities against any loss from fires requires positive and fast–responding optical flame detectors, with no tolerance for false or nuisance alarms caused by either EMI, lightning, x-rays, gamma radiation, arc welding, reflected sunlight, or any light source such as mercury or quartz iodine flood lights. Traditional UV and UV/IR detectors can be blinded by precombustion smoke, thus rendering the detector useless under these conditions. Also, oil mist or oil deposits on the quartz lens of a UV detector or combination UV/IR detector will seriously diminish the response to a fire. Therefore, we do not recommend using these types of detectors in a hydrocarbon environment.

The SST Model F120 Triple Mode UV/IR optical flame detector uses the latest state of the art processor and circuitry, eliminating the shortcomings of currently available UV/IR detectors which are subject to the aforementioned interferences. Outputs are either voted automatically, or can be manually selected by the customer. Selected outputs can either be for UV only, IR only, Temperature, or any two out of three combination. This “voting” capability is what sets this detector apart from any other UV/IR detector. This detector will see a fire, while other manufacturer’s detectors may not. To insure reliable operation, the detector is equipped with an automatic Optical Self-Checking feature which continuously checks the optical viewing window for cleanliness and confirms operation of the detection circuits.