Fire Fighting, ELV & Electrical for Shri Gang Industries — Sandila, Uttar Pradesh — Fire Fighting, Low Voltage, Electrical

Scope

• Fire Fighting
• Low Voltage
• Electrical

• In execution — fire fighting, ELV (low voltage) and electrical
• Client: Shri Gang Industries & Allied Products Ltd — BSE-listed; IMFL and country-liquor bottling plant and ENA distillery at UPSIDC Industrial Area, Sandila (its own description)
• Nine-line bottling facility and an extra-neutral-alcohol distillery on the same premises (company website)

Engineering challenge

• Shri Gang Industries & Allied Products Ltd describes itself as a BSE-listed company present across the alcohol value chain: a bottling plant for Indian-made foreign liquor and country liquor and a distillery for extra neutral alcohol at UPSIDC Industrial Area, Sandila, Hardoi district — a nine-line bottling facility and an ENA distillery on Praj Industries technology, manufacturing United Spirits brands for Uttar Pradesh. The company began in 1990 as Suraj Vanaspati Ltd with an edible-oil refinery at Sikandrabad, and says it is adding a second ENA/ethanol plant and a country-liquor bottling line on the same premises.
• A distillery and bottling plant is a flammable-liquid site. Ethanol vapour, spirit storage, the bottling hall and the warehousing of finished cases set the fire-protection design, and parts of the plant are hazardous areas where the electrical equipment, the cabling and the detection have to be specified for the zone they sit in.
• The three trades are one system here. The fire pumps need a secure electrical supply, the detection and alarm are low-voltage systems, the process areas need both zone-rated electrical equipment and the right detection, and the control room ties them together — so fire fighting, ELV and electrical are delivered by Secured Engineers as one package rather than split across contractors.
• The package is in execution at the Sandila site.

Our solution

• Fire fighting: the fire-protection installation for a distillery and bottling plant, where the hazard is spirit and finished cases rather than a generic factory floor.
• ELV: the plant’s low-voltage systems, cabled on routes planned together with the power rather than after it.
• Electrical: the power distribution for the plant areas in the package, with equipment specified for the hazardous zones of a spirit-handling site where the zoning requires it.
• One team for the three trades, with the interfaces between them coordinated in-house.

Approvals

Work of this scope typically runs through the following statutory approvals, which we manage end to end:

• Fire NOC — the state process
• CEIG approval — HT installations, DG sets and solar

Outcome

• In execution. Capacities, equipment, test records and approvals will be added to this record when the work is handed over; nothing is claimed ahead of that.
• A single point of responsibility for the fire, low-voltage and electrical systems of the package.

Lessons and engineering considerations

• Zone the plant before specifying anything. Where ethanol vapour can be present — the distillation house, spirit receivers, blending and the bottling line — decides which equipment must be flameproof or intrinsically safe, and the zoning drawing comes before the electrical schedule.
• Spirit storage is the fire-water case. Hydrant and monitor coverage, foam where the storage calls for it, and a pump set and water reserve sized for the largest spirit fire — not for the office block.
• Keep ignition sources out of the vapour path. Earthing and bonding of tanks, pipework and tankers, static control on transfer, and lighting and cabling rated for the zone are the electrical details that matter most on a spirit site.
• Detection has to see the hazard it sits in. Flammable-gas detection in the process areas alongside smoke and heat detection in the bottling hall and warehouse, with the cause-and-effect agreed with the plant’s operating team.
• A bottling hall is a packaging warehouse that moves. Cases, cartons and shrink-wrap are the ordinary combustible load, and the protection of the finished-goods store is designed for them.
• Plan the containment for the plant that is coming. A second distillery or bottling line on the same premises is announced before it is built; routes and spare capacity for it are cheaper on day one than across a running plant later.