I recently submitted a paper on Intrinsic Safety in zone 2 using Exic, which was published in the July 2013 issue of SA Instrumentation and Control. In the third paragraph I asserted: “When ATEX was first introduced in Europe, a 1,5 safety factor was not applied to cable parameters. In the early 2000s, the ATEX directives were updated to apply the safety factor of 1,5, which impacts plants built between 1995 and 2002 based on earlier ATEX standards where longer cable runs were required.”
Gary Friend.
On a recent visit to the UK, I did a little more digging on this topic and found out that it was not the 1,5 safety factor that changed the Co capacitance values, but rather some testing done in Germany. This has been corrected in the online version (thanks Ed), for completeness, the paragraph should read: “The CENLEC standard and subsequently the IEC standard changed the capacitive reference curves because of some tests done in Germany. This reduced the allowed cable capacitance after 2002. This impacts plants built between 1995 and 2002 based on earlier ATEX standards where longer cable runs were required.”
Please extend my apologies to readers for the incorrect assertion.
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