________ detector responds more quickly to smoldering fires?

• A. Ionization
• B. Photoelectric
• C. Rate of Rise
• D. Fixed Temperature

Answer: (B)

Smoldering fires produce a lot of smoke with fine particles before there are flames, so detectors that respond to smoke, not heat, are faster in these cases. A photoelectric detector uses a light source and a sensor; when smoke particles scatter the light, the sensor detects it and triggers the alarm quickly. This makes photoelectric detectors particularly quick for smoldering fires.

Ionization detectors, on the other hand, are more responsive to the rapid combustion and hot gases of flaming fires, not smoke. Heat detectors like rate-of-rise or fixed-temperature focus on rising temperatures rather than smoke, so they tend to be slower to respond to smoldering fires.