Hazardous Areas and ATEX

Hazardous Areas and ATEX are very popular subjects for Abhisam Hazardous Area webinars, that always see large number of attendees.

A hazardous Area (also referred to as  a “Classified Location” in the US) is a part of a plant or facility, that has a risk of fire, or explosion, due to the presence of mixtures of air and flammable or explosive gases, vapors and dusts (including fibers and flyings). Contrary to what many people think, a hazardous area is not likely to be present in just the Oil & Gas, or chemical industries, but it could be present in many other industrial processes.

A hazardous area may be also present in places like grain silos, mines, power generation plants, sugar processing units, textile processing units and metals plants. Some of the worst dust explosions have occurred in these kind of places, for example the Georgia sugar dust explosion.

ATEX is an acronym for ATmospheres EXplosives and is the European Union set of directives to regulate hazardous areas in the EU and the equipment used in them.

There are two directives, the first directive is for the owners of the plants that have hazardous areas (such as for example, chemical plants).

The second directive is for the suppliers of equipment to these plants. Unlike other hazardous area equipment standards & specifications, ATEX Equipment Directive also covers non electrical equipment, such as pumps and compressors, or even bucket conveyors.

Find out about this interesting  subject when you attend this webinar.

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