Fighting Warehouse Fires, Dryer Noise Reduction

Joseph McIntyre, NPRL agricultural engineer, is working on an early fire detection system for peanut warehouses and is looking for ways to make peanut dryers quieter.
Photo by Georgia Peanut Commission

An agricultural engineer for NPRL, Joseph McIntyre, is working on projects to make storing and drying peanuts safer. Specifically, he is working on an early fire detection sensor and system for peanut warehouses, which also has potential in cotton storage.

McIntyre says, “The idea is to try to catch peanuts or cotton in the hot stage but not yet burning. If you could catch them then with some type of sniffer that you stick into the pile, the hope is that you could just dig that section out before you have a propagating fire. That way, the warehouse only loses a few hundred pounds of peanuts as opposed to a whole warehouse.”

McIntyre explains that fires can start multiple ways, such as ordinary fires that start with electrical problems or sneaky fires that are caused by roof leaks allowing moisture to get into the product.

“The peanuts or cotton will start a biological chain reaction that breaks them down, generates heat and produces volatile gases. Eventually, you will get a hidden, smoldering fire in the pile that you cannot see. This will proceed until it breaks out into a disaster.”

Currently, the best way to fight a fire is to take the walls off the building, remove the product and spread the flaming product out to hose it down. “You cannot put enough water on top of the pile to put the fire out at the bottom in any reasonable amount of time,” he says.

Using the resources of both the U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service’s Missoula Fire Science Lab and the Aerodyne Research Atmospheric Lab, McIntyre says they have detected hydrogen cyanide, formaldehyde, ethane, carbon monoxide and a carbon dioxide increase.

“This leaves us targets to create sensors for warehouses detection units. The goal is to have a network system reading off those sensors that will inform the warehouse manager of what’s going on in the warehouse on his phone,” he says.

This early detection, pre-combustion, could save thousands of pounds of peanuts or cotton, the warehouses they are stored in, reduce pollution from the fire and even save lives from having to fight a large, out-of-control fire.

Another project McIntyre is working on, with the hearing safety of post-harvest workers in mind, is quieting peanut dryers.

“Essentially, dryers are big jet engines that don’t go anywhere. There is a big fan in the front and dryer in the back, and they annoy the neighbors,” McIntyre says.

Working with the NASA Langley Structural Acoustics Branch, they are trying to determine if engine aircraft quieting materials could be used in the body of the dryer to make a built-in muffler that could stand up to the conditions surrounding peanut drying and reduce noise levels for worker safety and the reduction of noise pollution. Different options continue to be investigated by McIntyre and NPRL.

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