Kidde Commercial‘s has announced further information regarding their EXCELLENCE series smoke detectors, with patented optical sensing technology that was launched in January 2024.
Kidde has discussed how that do only do the detectors take heed from the lessons learned on nuisance alarms during the past half century, but they also incorporate a clean-sheet approach to nuisance alarm root causes.
The multi-wave, multi-angle smoke detectors have been designed to demonstrate Kidde Commercial’s dedication to innovation.
With patented optical sensing technology and MIE light scattering theory they accurately differentiate between nuisance particles and serious threats.
With this technology false alarms are greatly reduced. This is especially important for areas that hold flammable materials, or where early detection is vital. Think of areas such as hotels, universities, kitchens and leisure complexes.
As well as being able to detect harmless nuisance particles such as dust, steam and cooking particles, EXCELLENCE smoke detectors can also identify particulate associated with specific fires and elevate these in process consideration, making detection faster and more accurate.
Another feature which sets the EXCELLENCE Series optical detectors apart, according to Kidde, is their dual detection mode. In normal operating mode the detector uses only the forward scattering signal of the IR LED, in a similar way to most legacy detectors.
Every time this LED is pulsed, it checks the difference in signal from clean air. As soon as the difference increases above a set trigger level, the detector switches to analysis mode.
In analysis mode all three detection LEDs are used. Within milliseconds the detector calculates the forward and back scatter ratios and uses its clever alarm equation to evaluate these ratios to make the alarm decision.
An alarm is only raised when a set ratio level in the detector is reached in relation to the detected particles.
Even though Kidde claim that the EXCELLENCE series optical chamber is designed to be pretty much immune to dust ingress due to its conductive chamber plastics and chamber smoke path design, clean air values are constantly checked and updated if necessary.
The detector uses the clean air value using all three detection LEDs to calculate contamination.
Under standard conditions the clean air values are calculated:
If any of the clean air readings is out of the compensation range, a maintenance fault will be reported to the CIE.
The greatly reduced false alarm rate due to smoke discrimination, together with the reduced fault-finding time due to the built-in local event log, means that the user can enjoy a multitude of operational savings.
Kidde has designed the series to involve super easy installation with multiple installation and cabling options, with costs being saved on the installation!
EXCELLENCE series devices can coexistent happily alongside legacy 2000 series devices. This makes legacy systems scalable. Systems can be expanded as schedules allow, without compromising performance.
Following the launch of Kidde Commercial’s EXCELLENCE series smoke detectors in January 2024, Kidde has provided further information on the features and technology of the series.
