A postcard from Rio de Janeiro

Apologies for the lack of recent additions to this blog, but an IEC meeting in Rio temporarily stemmed all rational thoughts on real hazardous area instrumentation issues. One of the compensations of attending IEC meetings is that sometimes they are held in interesting places such as Rio. It does provide an opportunity to meet old friends and adversaries, often combined in the same person.

The meetings of the three maintenance teams, which determine the content of the draft standards, dominated the intrinsic safety meetings. Sometimes I wonder how representative maintenance teams are of the real world. A few people [including myself] who do the initial drafting and take an active part in resolving the response to any comments dominate them. These few sometimes have personal axes to grind and/or an advantageous position to defend. As the IEC Ex scheme becomes more readily accepted the IEC standards become even more significant and if left to the few, could become too restrictive and impractical. Active participation by all interested parties –users, manufacturers and certifying bodies, is the ideal way to achieve a practical standard with an adequate level of safety.

The present state of the IEC standards on intrinsic safety is:

If any of these subjects is of interest then please get the documents from your national committee and provide your comments. Complaining afterwards is too late. And of course if your comments are rejected, you can always say ‘I told you so’ as you go bankrupt or your site is closed on economic grounds

The current ‘in thing’ with the cognoscenti is ‘risk analysis’ and equipment protection levels [EPLs]. There is still considerable enthusiasm for this subject for some inexplicable reason. No doubt it will find some applications when an acceptable method of analysis appears, but meanwhile the ancient technique of area classification used with compatible equipment selection will thankfully prevail

Explore posts in the same categories: CENELEC, Explosion Protection, Hazardous Areas, IEC, IEC60079, Intrinsic Safety