Unveiled at FIREX 2018: Pioneering fire prevention in electrical appliances and automatic fire detection and suppression system

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Adam Bannister is a contributor to IFSEC Global, having been in the role of Editor from 2014 through to November 2019. Adam also had stints as a journalist at cybersecurity publication, The Daily Swig, and as Managing Editor at Dynamis Online Media Group.
June 15, 2018

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The risks to housing tenants posed by faulty electrical appliances has come into sharp focus over the past 12 months.

Faulty washing machines, tumble dryers and fridge-freezers are causing more than 60 fires every week, a Which? investigation published in February revealed.

Visitors to FIREX 2018 will be the very first to see two new ground-breaking products that extinguish electrical fires at source.

IFSEC Global spoke to Garry Adey, managing director of Helios Systems Ltd, about the eBulb, which can be fitted to white goods as well as TVs and other appliances, and AMFE suppression and detection for electrical control cabinets.

Helios will also have a moving cannon and a camera actually attacking a false fire.

IFSEC Global: Can you give us a brief history of Helios?

Garry Adey: Helios was started four years ago, through our sister company, European Attachments. One of our clients was looking for early warning fire detection systems and asked us to go to market and try and find something.

We kicked off originally with the PYROsmart product and Rosenbauer fire suppression systems. Since then we’ve grown quite rapidly into the waste sector, going more and more into targeted fire suppression.

And since then we’ve obviously expanded into AMFE suppression and detection for electrical control cabinets.

 

IG: How did the E-Bulb come about?

GA: Well the E-Bulb came up because of how big we are in the waste sector. People were saying “can you do suppression for any of our electronic components for control panels?”

We couldn’t, so we approached the biggest manufacturer of sprinkler bulbs in the world [JOB], who were developing a system to be retrofitted within consumer items and for electrical control cabinets.

After about six months’ development work with them we developed E-Bulb and AMFE for control cabinets. On the back of that we used them as a fuse-type system that could not only stop the electrical flow or circuit, but also then stop the fire that had started by using Novec Engineered Fluids.

With the E-Bulb, as soon as it detects a heat source, before you’ve had any voltage drop it would shatter and discharge the Novec, extinguishing the fire and stopping the power

JOB itself is actually now going direct to manufacturers to get the E-Bulb fitted inside a product in the factory [rather than being retrofitted].

[Where retrofitting is concerned] We’re in advanced talks with quite a few people saying “yes we can [retrofit the E-Bulb]”: we can put this circuit board in, and that becomes the main power into whatever appliance it is – and that will deal with any shorts and fire in a control panel.

Again, we’ve not really had it fully put out yet; we’re waiting on a Firex 18 to launch.

IG: Is it a cost-effective solution to a widespread problem recently highlighted by a Which investigation? Presumably retrofitting this is much more cost-effective than buying new white goods, new TVs, Playstations etc…

GA: Yes of course. The actual component itself is not that expensive: it’s approx £10 per appliance. It’s just the cost of actually going into a multi-storey tower and you could be looking at five or six of these [in one flat] – it’s the labour cost factor and how it’s retrofitted.

IG: Tell us a bit more about the mechanics of how this works…

GA: From our point of view it’s better to stop the electrical fire. The big issue is not the short on these circuit boards; it’s not a big enough problem to actually trip the main distribution board, so you continue getting power.

At Grenfell, as far as I’m aware it was a fridge electrical panel which actually set fire. The board didn’t trip until something else went.

With the E-Bulb, as soon as it detects a heat source, before you’ve had any voltage drop it would shatter and discharge the Novec, extinguishing the fire and stopping the power so it becomes a failsafe.

(Helios is exhibiting at FIREX International, 19-21 June 2018, ExCeL London. You can find them on stand A495. Register now.)

IG: Please tell us a bit more about the substance emitted to extinguish the fire…

GA: There’s no water involved. It uses 3M Novec. Above 42 degrees it becomes a gas, and it’s not a toxic gas. As soon as that happens it puts the fire out. It’s environmentally friendly.

Some people say they’re not bothered about tripping the electrics. What they want is having this inside each component so that when it detects a heat source, it shatters.

By cutting the power it can’t reignite; you’ve stopped the passage of electrical supply within the short.

IG: Are you confident this is a reliable product?

GA: The failure rate of the sprinkler bulbs is something like a zero failure tolerance – and they produce over a billion sprinkler bulbs every year.

This uses exactly the same process and machine [for manufacture]. The E-Bulb also has a metal coating to make it conductive. There are two options [for installation]. One, we can fix directly onto the board, so a retrofit with no major cost. It won’t stop the power supply going in but it would deal with the fire.

If you want the supply cut, that’s a little more expensive. We would then need to produce a circuit board with a connection between the external and internal power supply and that circuit board can potentially short, cutting the main power supply to the appliance.

IG: How do you see your business model working with E-Bulb?

GA: We haven’t really started on the market yet with E-Bulb because we’re waiting for fire regs, so we don’t yet know what will be required.

We don’t know whether we’ll put teams of guys out fitting these bulbs into appliances or whether the fire team we know will do that. And we’re opening up a dishwasher, a washing machine or a drier and putting the E-Bulb inside – how does that effect the warranties?

We have to see how quickly this takes off and what the protection is. Housing associations or landlords might say “we’ll buy a thousand off you and we’ll fit them”. No problem. That then becomes for us a simple process of processing them and sending them out. They are very easy to fit.

IG: So what can we expect to see at FIREX?

GA: We’re launching AMFE and E-Bulb – which are a big focus.

We’ll have PYROsmart and the Rosenbauer system on the stand. We’ll have a moving cannon and a camera actually attacking a false fire.

So that will be quite exciting for people to see – a system actually moving and detecting heat sources.

Our main market there is obviously the waste industry, as well as other industries like petro-chem, hangars, storage facilities…

AMFE and E-Bulb will be [targeted at] data centres and technology-based industry. Possibly housing associations too. Rather than putting a suppression system in all their high-rise buildings, they may be interested in paying for every appliance to have an E-Bulb in it.

We’ve grown rapidly over the last three or four years and this year is the first time we’re doing FIREX.

We really want to use it as a platform to launch these products and drive the Helios brand. Unless people are actively looking [for our services] then they might not know about us.

Corporate videos will be introduced at the show that showcase the products and what we’re doing.

Nobody has actually seen AMFE yet. The reaction we got from IFSEC Global when we showed you the product was “wow, this is a great piece of equipment”. This thing could really take off in the market.

Let’s see what kind of response we get back from the show – then we’ll take it from there.

Helios is exhibiting at FIREX International, 19-21 June 2018, ExCeL London. You can find them on stand A495. Register now.

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