How to Prevent Wood Pallet Fires at Your Waste Facility

Safe Disposal to Prevent Wood Fires in Your Commercial Waste

Wood pallets are one of the most prevalent waste materials for businesses in the industrial, construction and manufacturing sectors. They are also some of the most challenging materials to dispose of. First, there’s the issue of volume as wood pallets take up a lot of space and are difficult to store. Second, wood is a combustible material, presenting a fire hazard for businesses storing wood waste.

Wastech Engineering has an answer to both of those concerns. Our high-quality waste and recycling equipment can help your business efficiently manage wood pallet disposal challenges and fire suppression. Let’s take a look at the equipment you need to achieve this.

How to Dispose of Unwanted Wood Pallets

Wood pallets and wood crates cannot be recycled into engineered timber as assembled. This creates a problem for landfills because wood pallets and crates take up unnecessary space and could be put to more sustainable use if handled correctly.

If your business frequently disposes of wood pallets, consider how you can reuse them for other business operations before you discard them. However, when waste transfer stations do receive wood pallets, they need a more efficient way to process them.

Wastech Engineering’s Presto Timber Crusher reduces the volume of 6.5 tonnes of wood waste into a standard 31m3 bin. It creates wood splinters that are sent to a wood recycling facility instead of a landfill.

How Wood Pallet Disposal Creates a Fire Hazard

Using any timber crusher, however, creates a fire hazard for businesses. Wood is a combustible material, so it can catch fire around electrical and mechanical components. This concern is especially prevalent at businesses where the wood splinters are near other, more combustible materials like paper and cardboard.

How to Prevent Fires at Your Business

To prevent fires from wood and other waste materials, any business that handles waste should install a fire suppression system. These systems use thermal imaging to detect upticks in thermal activity. There are two types of these systems: automatic fire suppression systems and manual fire suppression systems.

When automatic fire suppression systems detect a potential fire, they alert workers of the threat and automatically initiate steps to suppress it. Manual fire suppression systems have a manual application release, alerting workers of the fire but requiring human verification before taking action.

Wastech Engineering supplies and installs the Fire Rover automated fire suppression system for businesses across Australia and New Zealand. The Fire Rover uses military-grade thermal detection and high-definition video to constantly monitor your facility for thermal activity. The Fire Rover’s firefighting agent effectively stops fires of all shapes and sizes – wood, metal, petroleum, plastic, agricultural and waste fires.

Wastech Engineering will design a custom fire prevention solution to address your business’s needs. If you’re worried about wood pallets and crates catching fire, we’ll ensure a Fire Rover suppression system is installed near that station.

To learn more about how proper equipment can reduce risks associated with waste management, set up a consultation with Wastech Engineering. From wood recycling machinery to fire suppression systems, we have all of your needs covered. Call us on 1800 465 465 or find more information online.