Infrared Thermal Imaging in Firefighting and Rescue

Fire reconnaissance

Fire reconnaissance is all the information about the fire fighting objects obtained by the fire brigade, is the basis for the commander to deploy the task and fight, and is one of the most important work in the whole fire scene. Without the data and information provided by fire reconnaissance, other fire fighting and rescue operations will lose their direction. However, in our actual combat process, fire reconnaissance is often just a simple question and a look. Occasionally, there are fires and headless flies. Even with the help of simple naked eyes, greater losses have occurred. Infrared thermal imager can be used as an auxiliary tool in fire detection to determine the position of flame center, combustion degree and spread. The field commander can observe the fire scene through the thermal imager. According to the information, the fire scene commander can correctly arrange the strength and effectively put out the fire.

The thermal imager is most suitable for detecting the situation where the fire is not very big and the smoke is very big. When the fire is in complete combustion, the naked eye can clearly judge the fire situation. Due to high temperature smoke and other reasons, the thermal imager can not get more information than the naked eye. Another reason is limited by the resolution of the existing thermal imager (320 * 240 or 640 * 480), the image resolution obtained by the thermal imager is not high enough.

When the fire is in a smoldering environment with small fire intensity and heavy smoke, the thermal imager can effectively play its role, which is conducive to improving the fire extinguishing efficiency and reducing the water loss during fire extinguishing. If the traditional way is used, it will waste a long time to find the fire source, and there are many obstacles in the plant, which makes it difficult to walk, because the visibility was less than 1 meter under the strong light at that time. However, with the help of the thermal imager, we can clearly see the passageway and the obstacles in the workshop. We found a hot spot at a distance of about 10 meters, approached to further confirm the fire source, then put out a water gun to put out the fire source within 2 minutes, and the whole fire fighting and rescue battle was no more than 5 minutes.

Finding the fire source

The thermal imager can be used to assist firefighters to put out the fire. It can judge the root of the fire through the thermal imager, rather than the conventional fire. This can effectively improve the fire fighting ability and put out the fire better and faster. However, when using the thermal imager, it is not allowed to draw water at the same time, because the cooler water flow will obviously interfere with the thermal imager's judgment of the flame temperature, thus losing the use effect. Thermal imager can help to find the fire, especially the smoldering.

Safety inspection of building structure

Thermal imager can also carry out non-destructive testing on the safety of the building structure, and continuously detect the load-bearing parts of the building at the same time of fire fighting, so as to judge whether the strength of the building decreases. Especially in the combustion of large-span steel structure plant, because the steel structure begins to reduce strength at 300 degrees, thermal imager can be used to judge whether the steel structure is safe or not, and those parts need special cooling to ensure the safety of plant and personnel.

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