How many times have you been intimidated by Hazardous Areas?
Whether you are an engineer working in a chemical processing plant, or in a shipping company that handles oil and petroleum products, or a technician working on an offshore oil platform or a design engineer working in an engineering company, you must have encountered hazardous areas, several times in your work.
Hazardous areas are those areas of a plant or facility, which may have explosive mixtures of gases, vapors or dusts present, which means the risk of explosion is higher than in "normal" areas. Controls and instruments in these areas require to be designed with protective means, to prevent fires and explosions from occuring.
So far, so good.
The problem is that that there are several hazardous area & material classification standards, with differing terms. There are additionally several ways of implementing electrical protection in these hazardous areas, which makes it all the more intimidating. There are explosion proof instruments, which are distinctly different from intrinsically safe ones which are again different from non-incendive ones.
So how to go about your job?
How to decide, which is the best method of protection? How to classify hazardous areas in your plant or facility? And how do you ensure that you have done the right thing?.
Perhaps you would refer to the standards kept in your company library. Or you could refer to a book on the subject.
But the problem is that the published standards and books are themselves not easy to understand.
Or, you need to spend a lot of time and effort in poring over them till you find out what you really need.
You could enroll in a training course on Hazardous Areas.
But the problem is that there aren't many in the first place. Secondly, you need to take time off to travel, perhaps to a different city, spend at least a day or so and spend quite a lot of money on it.
No doubt it would be worth it, but should you really be doing so?
What if there is an easy way of studying all about Hazardous Area Instrumentation, without leaving the comfort of your home or office, without spending money on travel and for a fraction of the money that you would spend on a classroom training session?
