Hazardous Area Installations

Hazardous Areas are typically found in large facilities like chemical processing plants, oil production platforms, tank farms, refinaries, storage tanks, ships, grain silos, warehouses and other similar areas, which have the risk of explosion or fire dure to explosive mixtures of vapors or dust. While most technical personnel, who work in such facilities or help in designing these installations, are fairly aware of hazardeous areas and the risk involved, the report of a recent study carried out by the Health and Safety Executive, UK, is surprising, as well as shocking. It points to the fact, that many so called hazardous area installation, were not put to the standard and some were downright unsafe. It states that, out of the TWELVE major sites surveyed, only ONE site passed the inspection. This means eleven of the twelve sites ( a whopping 92 %) had potentially dangerous hazardous area electrical & instrument installations. Out of these sites surveyed, on 50% of the sites, the situation was so bad that formal enforcement action had to be take by the authorities. The high incidence of poor hazardous area installations was also thought to be behind many of the actual dangerous occurrences reported.
This white paper is an attempt to help engineers and managers, not only in the UK, ut also elsewhere, to have a clear understanding of this subject and address the key issues involved. The aim would be to make 100% of installations safer, all over the world.