INTRODUCTION:
All Water Treatment Plants contain high volumes of Chlorine. In the event of a chlorine leak, evacuation procedures are complex as the assembly point depends on the direction of the wind.
To address this challenge, FS-Systems utilized a TOA Audio Evacuation System interfaced to a Ziton ZP3 Analogue addressable fire alarm system.The client was pleased with this solution as we used technology to address an evacuation process that would otherwise be extremely difficult to implement.
THE BACKGROUND:
In the event of an emergency it becomes crucial to communicate the nature of the emergency to all occupants of the facility. This is fairly straight forward for a fire emergency as there are fixed assembly points where occupants gather in the event of the emergency.
However, this is not the case in the event of a chlorine, ammonia or other toxic / harmful gas leaks, as your assembly points will depend on the direction that the wind is blowing.
After discussing and understanding the clients concerns, FS-Systems decided to customize the TOA Audio Evacuation System to solve the client’s problem. FS-Systems worked closely with TOA and the client to provide a unique solution that enabled the client to create an evacuation process for a chlorine leak.
SOLUTION IN DETAIL:
We immediately realized that we needed to install a wind direction switch to determine the wind direction. There were various challenges which we faced in implementing this:
The wind is extremely turbulent and changes direction suddenly for short periods of time
There was insufficient capacity on the TOA system for the fire evacuation alert, evacuation and all clear message as well as the wind direction message
We built delays into the wind direction switch before inputing the direction into the TOA evacuation system. We had the chlorine alarm messages recorded in a studio and installed additional memory into the TOA System to incorporate the additional messages.
The result was a single solution which addressed a fire and chlorine alarm through the innovative use of TOA, Ziton and FS-Systems engineering.
THE FEEDBACK:
The client was impressed with the solution that FS-Systems implemented and we have already proposed a similar solution at another water treatment plant for the same client.