Design and Development of an Early Fire Detection Nose (EFD−Nose) for Human Space Capsule

Fire has helped humans in several ways, but it becomes catastrophic, when out of control and hence spearheading research in the field of early fire detection. Early fire detection systems have been designed using many approaches and one is either an Electronic-Eye (E-Eye) or an Electronic-Nose (E-Nose) for various applications. In this paper, design and development of an Early Fire Detection Nose (EFD-Nose) for early detection of fire inside a human space capsule is proposed. The proposed work is an outcome of a funded project from Indian Space Research Organization. The performance evaluation of proposed EFD-Nose is carried out by conducting various experiments on burning materials used inside a human space capsule. The proposed EFD-Nose based early fire detection system also employs an E-Eye to reap the benefits of both sensors by detecting electrical sparks, smoke due to overheating of materials on-board as well as fire. The proposed system can be designed cheaply and the electronics consumes only 600mW of power with a response time of 0.51 seconds. The proposed prototype can be directly employed for consumer applications on Earth such as in houses, shops, industries, offices, garages, etc.