Industries across the board need to maintain mission-critical facilities—meaning that these facilities are essential to the organization’s ability to perform its intended function. Be it housing valuable contents (museums or document storage) or critical business infrastructure (chip manufacturing or power generation); these facilities must maintain operation 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Therefore, early warning of smoke or gas is essential to prevent any disruptions.
Air sampling systems are often used in facilities that require very early warning detection, as the dynamics of the airflow creates a challenge for spot-type detectors. Industries with potential application for air sampling include:
The team at Xtralis has manufactured a highly sensitive air sampling system with the VESDA® aspirating smoke detection (ASD). VESDA® ASD systems can be equipped with modules to detect hazardous/combustible gases to extend their value beyond smoke detection to include gas detection and environmental monitoring.
How Does VESDA® Air Sampling Work?
The first thing to understand about VESDA® is that it's an acronym for Very Early Smoke Detection Apparatus. VESDA® aspirating smoke and gas detectors buy the critical time needed to investigate an alarm and initiate an appropriate response to prevent injury, property damage, or business disruption. These detectors have multi-level warnings and a wide range of sensitivity that does not degrade or change over time, so even extremely small levels of smoke or gas can be detected before a fire has time to escalate.
It can be as simple as a standard spot-type detector mounted in the specially designed enclosure or a highly sensitive, laser-based sensing chamber, designed to provide fire detection at its incipient stage—many more times sensitive than spot-type detectors.
Advantages of VESDA® Air Sampling
The initial installation cost of the air sampling equipment is generally more than that of other code-compliant options. But the installation of spot-type detectors could cost you more in the long run.
Sometimes the use of air sampling is driven by the difficulty of installing, testing, and maintaining spot-type detectors. Installed with a little forethought, testing an area that might require dozens of spot-type detectors to provide equivalent protection can be done from a single test port at the end of each sampling pipe. In other words, if you were installing spot-type detectors, you would have to access each device every year and test it in place. Large areas, like an atrium or gymnasium, or places difficult to access, like a prison housing unit or underfloor server room detection, could multiply service costs significantly over time.
In addition to the advantages mentioned earlier, there are other reasons to choose a VESDA® air sampling system:
VESDA® Air Sampling Partner
Having a quality partner to provide the knowledge and experience needed to oversee proper design, installation, and maintenance for the life of your facility is critical. Performance Systems Integration is an approved VESDA® partner and we're ready to help you decide if a VESDA® system is right for your business. Contact us now for a no-cost or obligation consultation.