In this episode, Donovan chats with Eric Peterson of Fagus-GreCon live from the International Powder & Bulk Solids Show 2025. They discuss spark detection, fire prevention, and keeping industrial facilities safe. Learn more about Fagus-GreCon: https://www.fagus-grecon.com/en-us/
Narrator: Welcome to the Dusty Jobs podcast from Imperial Systems. Industry knowledge to make your job easier and safer.
Donovan: Hello and welcome to another episode of the Dusty Jobs Podcast. We’re still here at Powder & Bulk. Today we got Eric Peterson.
Eric: Yes.
Donovan: From Fagus-GreCon. I always, I always, I just call you guys GreCon.
Eric: Yeah, it’s much easier to say GreCon. It’s much easier. That’s what we tell people to say, too.
Donovan: But Fagus-GreCon. And you guys, we’ve worked with you a lot of times with protection devices/
Eric: Correct.
Donovan: And you’ve been with the company now for six years.
Eric: Six years.
Donovan: But you have been in this industry for a while, right?
Eric: Yeah, I’ve been in the wood industry for about 15 years. I’ve been with Huber Engineered Woods for a while and also on the powder side of things. I’ve been with General Mills, Pillsbury as well. So, I have a lot of experience in the industry, probably about 20 years now.
Donovan: Now I know for us we use a lot of your product on the wood dust side.
Eric: Correct.
Donovan: Because we build a product called a Spark Trap which helps in metalworking, and we get a lot of calls from people that say, “Hey, I’m having fires in my wood dust baghouse.”
Eric: Correct.
Donovan: And they want to put that spark trap on there. And we’re like, “You cannot do that.”
Eric: Correct.
Donovan: And that’s a lot of times when we’ll call a company like you guys.
Eric: Exactly.
Donovan: And for everyone out there who’s unfamiliar, maybe they are having this issue, they’re having continual events in their wood collector — what can you guys do to help with that?
Eric: Well, I think the one thing that we do is we try to detect sparks, embers, hot particles before they become a fire or an explosion.
Donovan: I gotcha.
Eric: That’s always a good thing. So, you know, for a baghouse or anything for a dust collector, we try to detect the sparks before they go in there so there is no combustion, no issues. And we do it all seamlessly while the operation is running. Never need to shut down. It notices a spark, sprays a little bit of mist, kind of smothers that spark, extinguishes it, and everyone just goes around and doesn’t know anything different outside of our console. We’ll say, “Hey, you had a little spark there,” just so you know — and more from the standpoint that they can keep the history to know do they have a problem in their previous process. Is there an issue they should pay attention to, or is it just kind of a random incident?
Donovan: So, like if every time it happens when you’re cutting this type of board — I don’t even know what it would be — this grinding application, then the sparks happen, like you can kind of correlate that together. Is that what you’re saying?
Eric: Absolutely. Or things you might not think about initially. Sometimes with wood, there’ll be metal pieces that get into the wood. So, if you get a run where there’s a lot of metal pieces, you might get a lot more sparks as they’re cutting or shaving or things like that. Or even in a dust collection system, you have a fan running.
Donovan: Right.
Eric: Fans sometimes can turn, bend, adjust, or a piece gets in there and all of a sudden it starts creating sparks. And if you have a big dust flow and you have those sparks blowing, it’s only a matter of time before something bad will happen.
Donovan: Especially if you don’t have a material handling fan. Sparks being directly introduced into the dust stream is not good.
Eric: Let’s just say that’s what we try to prevent.
Donovan: Right. So, not only do you guys do that, but you guys have a ton of good information on your website, too.
Eric: Right. Correct.
Donovan: So, I know you were showing me this earlier. It’s a little bit of a breakdown of what a spark is.
Eric: I think sometimes people don’t know. And I’ll turn it around — it’s not perfect for everybody to see — but there’s a lot of different types of sparks. So, you have your standard spark that’s just what you would think, like when you see metal hitting flint or something like that — seeing the spark — or a fan hitting metal. You have kind of burning particles that can happen in the process. And then there’s a couple of odd ones that are kind of hot particles, or we call them like glowing or burning nests.
Donovan: Yes.
Eric: And those are when materials get stuck in your ductwork.
Donovan: Oh, okay.
Eric: And they kind of start warming up, but they kind of have that charcoal over the top. So, it doesn’t look hot, but all of a sudden when enough breeze starts blowing, sometimes that’ll release into your process.
Donovan: Like when you’re blowing on a campfire and it just looks like charcoal and then it gets red.
Eric: That is a perfect example of what it is.
Donovan: Right. Gotcha.
Eric: So, there’s a number of different types here and we have different detectors that sense these things because they each have a different kind of temperature. We have infrared detectors that notice it at different levels. So, there is a lead sulfite detector that’s good for one application and there’s a different detector that’s good for another. Now, and I know when Todd was on a few years ago, we had talked about a new detector that we had, which is our DLD 19. It’s the yellow — the easier way to say it, it’s the yellow little detector.
Donovan: The yellow little detector.
Eric: It’s much easier to remember. But this detector actually sees on the whole spectrum of things. So, you no longer need a specialty detector. This one will work in the dark, in the light, or even if you have dark to light because it — we’ll just say it doesn’t look like an intelligent detector, but it’s an intelligent detector that adjusts the sensitivity with kind of an AI kind of thinking. It will see things differently as the light changes.
Donovan: So, there’s a lot of abilities in that little yellow box.
Eric: Exactly.
Donovan: So, if someone’s having incidents, probably an important thing for them to be able to tell you guys is what kind of sparks they’re generating, right?
Eric: I mean, a lot of times they don’t know what type of sparks. Most of them would say, “I don’t think we have any sparks,” right? And ours is just to look at their process. What are they doing? What are the potential points where they could have issues? What is the type of material? What type of handling system do they have? And then we’ll go in and help kind of dissect where our detection and extinguishing will make the most sense for them.
Donovan: So, what you’re saying is you don’t have to have it all figured out before you call you guys. You guys will help whoever’s having these issues figure out why they’re having them.
Eric: Absolutely. Our system is extremely customized. Unless you have the same process — like if you had multiple facilities — unless you have the same process, then it would be the same application. But everybody’s got a little different turns, a little longer runs, all these different things, and that changes how we might protect the area to make sure you don’t have those nasty fires and explosions.
Donovan: Yeah, because with your system — detect and then extinguish — there’s definitely some minimum distances you need between where it sees the spark and have enough time to put it out.
Eric: Correct. And that is affected by the type of material, the speed of the material — all those things change how far it needs to be from detection to extinguishment. And I think one thing, you know, when we say extinguishment, people are like, they think a fire hose. And we’re not doing a fire hose. When we do an extinguishment, it’s just a 3- to 4-second little mist. And because of the fan, the particles spray very evenly in a nice cone, and when the fan is blowing, those particles just spread across, fill the ductwork, and extinguish it all without really changing the moisture content of the material that you’re running.
Donovan: It’s not like the water parks where the big bucket dumps.
Eric: No, there’s no bucket dump. It’s just like a misty spray.
Donovan: And you guys know how long to let that spray and how much to spray in there so that it absolutely puts the spark out but doesn’t create a waterfall.
Eric: Yeah. Just basically a slight little bit of moisture — just a pop of water. And again, just so it spreads evenly throughout the area that it’s covering.
Donovan: Okay, let’s say I’m there. I notice I have these issues. I’m inside my building. Does it have to be inside? Can it be outside? Can I tie it into my sprinkler system or does it need to have its own direct water? What are our limitations?
Eric: Yeah, there’s one thing — you don’t want to tie it into your regular sprinkler system. One is a regular sprinkler system, when it’s activated, it’s going to let the fire department know that something’s going on. We don’t want to let the fire department know that a spark’s going off because we’re just going to put it out. There’s no incident. They don’t have to worry about anything. And we want the water charged to the nozzle so that when we detect, it’s instantly putting the water in. You don’t want a system where the water takes a few seconds to get to the nozzle. These nozzles are charged and ready to go, so they can immediately go off. Now, you can do it both inside and outside, but you do obviously have issues with freeze–thaw that could happen. We have blankets that you can put over our extinguishment devices and there’s also things like heat tape you can use to keep them safe. And we actually have a new extinguishment that also has a heat monitor in it. So it will sense the temperature and when it gets to a certain temperature, it will activate that heat chamber to warm up the device so it doesn’t freeze.
Donovan: Nice. So, we have this hooked up, we have it so it’s not freezing. How much pressure do I need to put a device like this in?
Eric: You know, again, it will depend on how many nozzles you have and what you’re trying to do. So, it will vary a little bit, but 60 PSI is what we’re kind of talking about.
Donovan: Okay. But if I don’t have that, you guys can help me with that?
Eric: Yeah, we have pumps that we can add to the system to make sure that’s happening. Most people, if they have a good water source, they’re going to have pretty close. Most of the time if you have good city water — not everyone has that good high pressure — but if you have good enough pressure that can be done. But it’s always easy to add a pump into the system. That way you don’t have to worry about when the pressure drops for any reason, like it’s 7:30 in the morning, everyone’s taking their shower in the city and the pressure goes down. This allows you to know that you have good, consistent pressure.
Donovan: Okay. So, now you mentioned how many actual sprinkler — or not sprinkler — heads. What do you guys call them?
Eric: We just call them simple extinguishment nozzles.
Donovan: Extinguishment nozzles. So, is it the larger the ductwork gets the more I need, or how do you determine that?
Eric: Really for general ductwork it’s about how big it is. So, the bigger the ductwork, we might add more. That makes sense. In most applications it’s two — one on either side. That way you get a good cone of distribution on either side. Because if you just have one on the top, it’s got a little blind spot right around that top. We don’t want any blind spots. We want good coverage from both sides.
Donovan: Gotcha. Okay, so now you brought some show and tell, too.
Eric: Yeah, I brought some show and tell. I’ve got more toys here than I probably need.
Donovan: If you’re listening, get on YouTube and check this out. What are we looking at here?
Eric: This looks like — yeah, it’s called our IEM. It’s an intelligent extinguishing module. I’m going to pick it up just for a second. So, it’s normally sitting like this. These are the nozzles down here. But it’s kind of awkward just to hold and I don’t have good bracing here, and I haven’t been lifting as much as I should have.
Donovan: Yeah, looks like you get a workout. It’s definitely a sturdy-built piece of equipment for sure.
Eric: But it’s a new module that helps us with a number of different things. It has some of the intelligent type of thinking that we had with the detector. First, it will help on the maintenance side of things. One of the most critical things in any spark extinguishment system is we detect sparks — we’re fantastic at doing it, we don’t miss them. It goes in there, we do a great job. The biggest challenge is our extinguishments work really well — as you were talking about low pressure — all of a sudden, “Oh, I was doing something, I turned the water off.” Oh. So now we detect, but the extinguisher isn’t working.
We want to make sure it’s always working. So, we have an extinguishment that does a couple of different things. One, it’ll tell you if your water’s on or off. Obviously, you can do that with a flow switch, which is easy to do. But it will also make sure that you don’t have leaky nozzles, or a nozzle that doesn’t have good flow — like a good cone shape. Because obviously if you have a nozzle and it’s only flowing out of half of it, that’s going to be a problem. Now we have a unit here with intelligence that’s up here that sees how that flow is coming out.
Donovan: Okay.
Eric: It can tell somebody on our console and it will say, “Hey, your cone isn’t quite right. You should probably change that nozzle.” Or it’ll say your nozzle isn’t quite closing, so there’s a little bit of water leaking. You might want to see if it’s broken or if maybe some material got stuck and you need to clean that nozzle. So, It does some intelligent things. And as I mentioned before when we were talking about heat, it also has a heat chamber in here that will sense the temperature and if it’s getting colder, it will activate that heat chamber to keep it from freezing.
Donovan: Keep it from fogging up.
Eric: Yeah. And again, it’ll give that message to the operator back at our console. It’ll tell you if it’s leaking, if your cone isn’t right, if you need maintenance. And obviously when you have all that information, you should be able to quickly adjust it. That way when we detect, your extinguishment is going to work perfectly.
Donovan: That sounds great because if you don’t have this on there, then you probably have to do manual annual PMs and get up there — and boy, that’s sometimes tough to check in.
Eric: Yeah. But we like to have everybody do an annual one anyway just to make sure everything’s working the way it should. But when you have a system that has a lot of dirt — we know not every one of these places has won the Good Housekeeping seal of approval as far as cleaning — sometimes they can’t get to places monthly to do the cleanings. This type of device is a huge maintenance and operational savings.
The other thing nice about it is it’ll give them that warning before there’s an issue. You don’t want to find out you have an issue when you have a ton of sparks that could cause a fire. You want to find out before —
Donovan: The smoke’s coming out of the baghouse, that’s the bad time to find out.
Eric: That’s definitely a bad sign. So that’s nice. And the other thing is you were saying about — and I didn’t mention it, and sometimes I forget about it with this device — is most of the time with most nozzles you’ve got to get your wrench and you’ve got to undo it. And when you’re up high or in an awkward spot, it’s hard to do. This has got just the simple quick release.
Donovan: Oh, that is slick.
Eric: You just need to unscrew it here.
Donovan: Oh, yeah. You unscrew it, unclamp it.
Eric: And you pop it off. Even guys like me can do it.
Donovan: When you make it easy for people to do, they’re way more likely to do maintenance on things when it’s easy — and not ignore an issue when a nozzle is not performing correctly. If you make it easy for them to fix it, that’s what you want. That’s what we want — we want people to be able to go home safe to their families and not be worried about coming to work. Doing things like this is definitely preventing a lot of hazards or potential things down the line.
Eric: Absolutely. I mean, that’s what I tell our team every day — we get the opportunity, the privilege, and the responsibility to make sure everybody goes home every day and sees their families. And it’s a big responsibility, but we have equipment that we know will deliver that. As long as we make sure it’s lined out appropriately and do the occasional maintenance on it to make sure everything’s operating well, we get to live behind that promise.
Donovan: And the other thing is, whenever a baghouse goes down, sometimes that stops production and people are losing money. They’re off their job for a while, they’re not able to…
Eric: Oh, absolutely. I mean, I think that’s one of the best parts about a spark system — we’re getting the spark out before it combusts.
Donovan: Right.
Eric: And by doing that, it all happens in line. There is no stoppage. Everything just happens like it normally would. Everyone can keep working. They acknowledge the spark just to know that it’s happening, as we talked about, in case there are issues. But you’re not worried about shutting down or anything like that — you just keep on running.
Donovan: Just keep going. Yeah. Well, that’s exciting. That’s really great stuff. So right now, what if I already have a spark detection and extinguishing system on it — can I retrofit to this or is this a whole new system?
Eric: Absolutely. No, it’s very simple to do. You just need to replace the old unit and put this one on. A replacement for an old extinguishment can happen just with basically this piece and one tiny little extension because this one is a little bit smaller — which is a good thing because nobody wants huge pieces of equipment. But the other thing is, if you have one existing, all you’ve got to have is a little small extension that’ll make it fit, and it’s a quick, easy change. You can put it in the exact same position.
Donovan: That’s great. So if everything’s already plumbed, everything’s already done, you can just —
Eric: Absolutely.
Donovan: Man, that makes it even easier.
Eric: It makes it easy and it’s a good part of an upgrade. And when folks are looking around, depending on the corrosive nature of the environment they’re in, you need to update your extinguishment periodically anyway. And in particular, I’m just saying if it was a fertilizer facility — this isn’t all stainless steel — but we have stainless steel options for this as well for applications that might be a little more corrosive.
Donovan: And that’s what’s great — you guys have already thought through all this. Somebody doesn’t have to figure this out. They can just come to you guys and you’re going to help them with the right solution.
Eric: Absolutely. I mean, we started in the wood industry. As a company, we’ve been around for 115 years. We’ve been doing sparks for 50. And the reason we got into sparks was we were in the woodworking business —
Donovan: Oh, there’s sparks there.
Eric: And like a good German company, we were creating our own sparks and we had to put these out. We had to figure it out. So we figured out how to do that and then the rest is history. We don’t do woodworking anymore and now we do the spark business, and we’ve been able to apply it to a lot of different industries. We started in woodworking. We’re in grain, flour, sugar, tobacco. You get into recycling — because if wires or bales get in there — chemicals, power plants, tissue, nonwovens, diapers, wipes, you name it. Anything that could potentially combust, we’re probably involved with.
Donovan: We always say if it’s a light and it’s a fluffy dust, that’s where you want to start going to active detect and extinguish.
Eric: Absolutely. And obviously anybody who’s on your side of things that are looking for any dust collection and they’re doing any of that work, having a system like ours tied into that just makes a ton of sense.
Donovan: So, what’s the best way for anybody out there who’s listening and thinking, “Man, I need to do something like this” — what’s the best way to get a hold of you guys?
Eric: I mean, always the simplest way for most people today is hitting the website. And I have to say the word for you: Fagus-GreCon.com.
Donovan: If you just type in — if you Google GreCon, it’ll probably still get you close.
Eric: The other option is they can always call our phone number, which is 704-912-0000. That’s easy too.
Donovan: Oh, there you go. And we’ll put some links, we can put all that stuff in there.
Eric: Oh yeah, which is great. We really appreciate it. And we’ve been doing business, I know, for a lot of years.
Donovan: You guys have helped us out with a lot of trickier dusts that are challenges, and you guys help us figure out how to handle those properly. It gives our customers a lot of confidence and comfort because you guys have this history and this knowledge base, and it’s not just throwing a product at them — you guys come in and help with a solution to what we have going on.
Eric: Yeah, absolutely. And we buy a few things from you guys — Abort Gates and things like that. That’s always a good thing and it allows for a good partnership. And as you said before, the goal is to make sure everybody goes home safely every day.
Donovan: Yeah, that’s it. Well, hey, I really thank you so much for coming on, giving us some time. This is an exciting product. So if anybody out there is having these issues, feel free to reach out to us. We’ll get you in touch with those guys. And until next time, stay healthy and stay safe, and we’ll talk to you later.
Eric: All right. Excellent. Thanks so much. Appreciate it.
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Narrator: Thanks for listening to the Dusty Jobs Podcast. Breathe better, work safer.
