Experimental Analysis on False Alarms of Fire Detectors by Cooking Fumes

Abstract

Experiments were conducted to analyze the response of ionization and photoelectric detectors to the two typical Chinese cooking fumes simulated in the FE/DE. Four real fire smokes were also carried out for comparison with the nuisance cooking fumes. The outputs of the ionization and photoelectric detector, CO, CO2 and humidity were recorded throughout the six experiments and were compared. The results of these experiments show that the smoke detectors, especially the ionization detector, are sensitive to cooking fumes and nuisance alarms are easy to happen. It is also indicated that CO and CO2 concentration in the cooking fumes varied much less than those in the four real fire sources. The feasibility of reducing false alarms in kitchen through the use of multi-criteria algorithm, which combines the CO or CO2 with smoke, is discussed as well.