Design and set-up of a data acquisition system for fire monitoring

The accelerated development of industry in many countries has led to a significant rise of the use of pipelines in the transportation of chemicals in recent years. These pipelines may lay over hundreds of kilometers, a hallway is usually constructed and it is often used for more than one pipe. The relatively small space between the pipes in the same hallway involves a certain risk associated to the potential interaction between the pipelines. Since in many cases the transported fluids are flammable, an accidental loss of containment could lead to an accident with severe consequences on people, equipment and environment. A particular type of accidental scenarios, called domino effect, can multiply the scale of an accident and the gravity of its consequences. The most severe scenarios that can occur is the development of a jet fire, in this situation the thermal flux reaching another pipe is very high and it can damage the secondary target enlarging the scale of the accident and this scenario has not been sufficiently analyzed yet. For this purpose, a laboratory experimental set-up was designed to obtain data concerning propane jet fires impinging on a pipe conveying a gas or a liquid in order to quantify the thermal response of a “secondary” object in the different possible situations. The aim of this thesis is to design a system to obtain and collect data from these different devices in order to give information on the conditions under which the pipe is subjected in case of a fire. Initially, a data acquisition system was designed according to previous studies considering the available instrumentation and space of the experimental site. Subsequently, preliminary tests were performed to characterize the jet fire condition, to identify the best position for the equipment, to adjust the instrumentation and to test the operation of the all system elements. Based on these results, a set-up of the data acquisition system was assembled.