June 17, 2011

Explosion proof and intrinsically safe fork lifts

The Hunstman Corporation has reported that it has recently completed an upgrade of their forklifts used in their Chinese facility to meet Chinese standards. The article mentions the following:
"The firm originally imported all of its explosion proof equipment from Europe to comply with EU standard (EN1755:200), American standard (UL NEC500/505) and International standard (IEC). However China only accepts its own in-house standard when accrediting explosion proof equipment.
As a result of this all equipment had to go through system upgrade to ensure that it was up to the Chinese “General Principles for Explosion Proof Industrial Trucks in Explosive Atmospheres” (GB19854-2005). A representative for Huntsman and the factory said:
“The aim was to conduct an overall system upgrade on the European converted explosion proof trucks to meet the Chinese national standard.”
The importance of using explosion and intrinsically safe equipment in potentially unsafe environments is vital, especially when transporting raw materials as is the case in the Guangzhou plant. On vehicles such as forklift trucks components such as the ignition must be adapted to prevent any spark or heat that could cause safety concerns when in the working environment.
The representative added: All the requirements of explosion protection safety management and safety supervision were considered, including, for example, the design and installation of Exd batteries and Exd lights, rewiring of Exd enclosures and changing the start-up battery on the diesel trucks.”
 Read the article in this link

No comments:

Post a Comment