Ther­mo­graphy for More Safety

Wood pellets as an alternative and high-quality fuel have become increasingly important in recent years. Their local origin from sustainable cultivation in the region has given WUN Bioenergie GmbH the opportunity to respond to market demand as an environmentally friendly supplier of raw materials. However, like other fuels, stored wood pellets need to be secured and monitored around the clock to prevent causes of devastating damage in the event of a fire, for example. Robust and reliable thermography solutions are a suitable tool for plant protection here.

The Amager Resource Center (ARC) is a waste incinerator like no other. From the roof of the Waste to Energy facility, skiers and snowboarders wind their way down on green plastic mats from a height of about 80 meters, even in the summer. The city hall of the Danish capital, Copenhagen, is just five kilometres away. The location, which is almost in the heart of a European capital, as well as its use as a public leisure centre, shows how much confidence operators place in the safety of the ARC. An important component in the security concept is the WASTE-SCAN infrared monitoring system for early fire detection by InfraTec.

Solar power plants usually suffer from the disadvantage that they only supply energy when the sun is shining during the day. CSP (Concentrated Solar Power) solar tower power plants are different: they charge a large thermal buffer storage during the day, which allows the continuous generation of electrical energy also at night‐time. One of these solar tower power plants recently went into operation in the middle of the Atacama coastal desert in Chile. 

Many tons of waste are bunkered and processed every day in waste recycling plants. It is not uncommon for this to contain highly flammable materials. If ignition sources get into this storage area, for example during delivery, there is an acute risk of fire. Therefore, waste incineration plants are subject to the strictest fire protection requirements in order to prevent endangering the environment and local residents. For this reason, an extremely important preventive measure is the permanent monitoring of the waste bunker and, if necessary, the surrounding areas.

In the age of Industry 4.0, the demands on system suppliers are growing, not just with regard to the primary measurement and monitoring tasks, but also with regard to data networking and structure. To meet these demands, InfraTec has developed a platform‐independent internal data structure, which represents both the measurement and alarm data as well as the measurement sequences. Interfaces to control systems of leading suppliers, e.g. via TCP/IP in the PROFINET, Modbus, CC‐Link and many other versions, can be achieved flexibly and economically. The proprietary Gigabit Ethernet data interfaces of fast infrared thermography camera heads permit real‐time data analysis and evaluation.

Today's power and heating supply in the city of Bern is hardly imaginable without the Forsthaus energy centre (Energiezentrale Forsthaus – EZF). This power plant combines a refuse incineration plant (KVA) with a wood heating power plant and a combined gas‐steam power plant. The Swiss company relies on the WASTE‐SCAN infrared monitoring system from InfraTec for the early fire detection.

Concentrated Solar Power/​CSP Project

Test Facility for Commercial Solar Power Tower

For a couple of years the European Union (EU) is upgrading its Schengen treaty borderline by the means of selective personal and technical measures. Numerous projects have improved the general border security significantly by implementing state-of-the-art technologies. This process has not been totally finished, however. Next to the protected Schengen borderlines the EU is also looking beyond. The Ukraine is one of the countries the EU selected to improve the local border protection authorities.