Gulf Construction Online - New Cooper system draws attention

Fire Protection

New Cooper system draws attention

01 March 2005

Cooper Fire, a leading manufacturer of fire safety systems, has launched a high specification CF3000 analogue fire system in the region, which according to the company will be high on system integrity and performance.

Unveiled at the recent Intersec exhibition held at the Dubai Expo Centre, the product has elicited significant interest from contractors and specifiers alike, says managing director Duncan Harding.
The company has appointed Haven Fire and Safety as its distributor in the UAE for the new analogue range.
“The new fire system, which includes a comprehensive range of analogue addressable detectors and ancillary devices, offers a complete system solution where the panel and devices complement each other to give the best performance,” says a company spokesman.
Incorporating a large versatile touch screen, the CF 3000 has the ability to support multilanguage text and highly complex ringing pattern. The panel supports three separate stages of programming per sounder and each stage can be triggered differently. In addition, the control panel can programme the sound type and volume of each loop addressable sounder, he adds.
Elaborating on the system, he says: “All addressable devices on the loop are auto-addressed using the latest high-specification Cooper soft addressing protocol and include an integral short circuit isolator. To simplify installation and to minimise search distances, all detectors incorporate a status led that has 360 degrees viewing angle enabling it to be seen irrespective of the detector orientation.”
For ease of maintenance, the detectors can be easily cleaned on site by removing the optical chamber.

Optical chamber performance
The Optical chamber design, used in the Cooper ranges of optical and opto/heat detectors, benefits from a relatively low clean air background signal but maintains a large signal change to the alarm condition when subjected to smoke, demonstrating a performance superior to similar products available in the market, the spokesman claims. The magnitude of the background signal was carefully tailored during the design phase to provide a sufficient level for effective chamber fault monitoring without degrading the clean air to alarm ratio (Graph 1), he adds.

Heat detector performance
Combining a thermistor and moulding design, the Cooper heat detector demonstrates a performance that is close to the ideal of zero thermal lag (the target in any heat detector which becomes more critical at faster rates of temperature rise). The Cooper design achieves the closest performance to this ideal, when compared to similar products, giving a very predictable performance (Graph 2), he says.

System performance
“In general, device or standalone loop isolators normally operate entirely on voltage or current sensing. Using this approach, a partial short on the loop could give rise to a current or a voltage below or above the set limit of the isolators,” he explains.
“If this fault occurs, isolators may not isolate correctly allowing the partial short to corrupt loop communications, which may cause the loss of some or all-addressable devices.
“Every detector and interface of the Cooper analogue addressable system incorporates an integral voltage-sensing short circuit isolator but the similarity ends here,” the spokesman points out. “The unique system approach of Cooper CF3000 and devices allows the isolation of a partial short where the current sensing is performed by the panel and the voltage by the devices.
“The fault current flowing in the loop, caused by the partial short, is detected by the control panel, which removes the loop voltage temporarily so that all devices detect the loss of voltage causing them to open their isolators. The control panel then restores the loop voltage, whereby all devices sense the incoming and outgoing voltage, allowing them to re-close their isolators – except the devices on either side of the partial short whose isolators remain open due to the loop voltage being held below the turn-on voltage threshold.”
Haven Fire and Safety is already well established in the fire suppression field as UAE distributors for Ansul USA and the addition of Cooper Fire is a key development for the company.
“We are now able to offer cost-effective state-of-the-art fire detection solutions for all commercial, industrial and residential applications,” adds Haven Fire managing director Gerry Boux.