Case Study

Atlantic Recycling Limited are a large recycling and waste management company based in Cardiff, Wales.  They are part of the Dauson Environment Group.

 

Atlantic Recycling run a large materials recycling facility (MRF) and transfer station at their Eco Park facility.  Alongside this they operate a fleet of skip, hook and walking floor vehicles.  Processing approximately 150,000 tons of waste per year in the 140 acre site.

 

Across the UK, the Environment Agency (England), Natural Resources Wales (NRW), and Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA) have issued guidance to all operators that store any amount of combustible waste.  They must have an approved Fire Prevention Plan (FPP) that meets three key objectives.

 

1. To minimise the likelihood of a fire happening

2. Aims for a fire to be extinguished within 4 hours

3. Minimises the spread of fire within the site and to neighbouring sites

 

All waste sites must have procedures in place to detect a fire in its early stages to reduce the impact.  The plans must illustrate that the site can control heat to prevent self-combustion.,  Key to this is the monitoring of “sub-surface temperatures with a probe or another device that can take representative readings from the centre of a pile.  Temperatures on the surface of a pile are unlikely to represent that at the core”. Any companies that fail to do this breach their fire prevention plans and risk losing their site permits to operate.

 

Atlantic Recycling Limited has a responsibility to monitor the temperatures within its stockpiles as a condition of its Fire Prevention Plan (FPP).  Phil Ridley the Business & Development Director said “Atlantic has a duty to monitor the temperature of its waste stockpiles as part of its permit conditions and FPP.  We looked at several options to achieve this but none were able to the effective and cost effective solution Freeland Scientific were able to provide us.”

 

“We wanted a temperature monitoring solution that was robust, simple to use to monitor the stockpiles, cost effective and most importantly was a solution that provided the protection we required.  In doing this we complied with our regulator NRW and the Fire Service’s requirements from us. We can record for compliance and analyse heating trends and stockpile behaviours which contribute greatly towards our stockpile management and the mitigation of fire risks.”

 

“Previously we had been relying on thermal imaging for our temperature monitoring but found this was unable to penetrate into the core of the waste piles. Now our Wireless Temperature Probes are able to monitor temperature variations from the centre of our waste piles. We are provided with accurate and reliable data and we are quickly alerted to any temperature fluctuations which gives us the ability to act quickly to sudden changes in temperatures.”

 

Atlantic Recycling initially saw the Wireless probes at the RWM show.  After talking to the team they asked us to send them some information on the system.  Eric Crouch the Technical Manager then came out to the site to discuss and assess if it was a suitable product/solution for the site.

 

When asked about the system Phil said “We have now had the system for over 6 months and are very happy with its performance, reliability and the back-up support provided by the Team at Freeland Scientific.  The temperature dashboard is viewed on my office PC as well as being displayed on a monitor in our operations room meaning that the temperature can be monitored directly during the day by the site staff and out of hours by the Site Security Teams.  On site training has given the site staff added awareness and they can pin point any potential issues in stockpiles and intervene accordingly”

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Freeland Scientific have researched stockpiles self heating to the point of combustion for some time. The Wireless Temperature Probes were designed to provide customers with the most efficient way to monitor waste stockpiles.  The tiered alert system adds an additional security level to minimise a fire breaking out.  The early warning system initially send alerts to site staff as the temperatures rise and then if temperatures continue to rise alerting senior management.

 

The temperature data is displayed in an easy to read dashboard format – example illustrated data below that shows rising temperatures in a traffic light system.

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 It records the temperatures for each bay/batch and can be instantly displayed when sites are audited.