Mr. Ode had just bought a new factory to start producing hydrogen gas for his alternatively fuelled vehicles. For safety reasons, there could be no flammable materials in the factory, just steel and concrete. Nothing was even painted. He then hired a company to instal a state-of-the-art fire protection system. They had installed hundreds of highly sensitive smoke detectors throughout the factory. Each was linked to a sprinkler control unit so that, if triggered, it might immediately open the sprinkler above the fire. Thus, it would save the whole factory from water damage in the event of a fire. After much testing, the system was working perfectly. But when Mr.Ode inspected the system, he couldn’t believe the colossal mistake they had made. He called the designers of the system in and explained to them, “This is a hydrogen plant. There are no flammable materials allowed in the plant, and employees wear fire-proof clothing while in the plant; the only thing that can catch fire is the hydrogen itself.” Understanding their mistake, the system designers rebuilt the system.
What wrong had they done?
Answer
They had installed smoke detectors only, with no heat detection system.
Burning hydrogen doesn’t produce any smoke or fumes. There were no other flammable items allowed in the plant, so a fire could have burned for some time undetected by the smoke detectors.