Advantages of combining explosion protection techniques for petro-chemical projects

Electrical installations for hazardous areas are subject to major restrictions for equipment, installation and maintenance. Cost reduction on material and human resources is also in this field the major driving force to look for more simplified and less expensive solutions. Combining various explosion protection methods is a popular approach for certain applications, however it is still not fully utilised. Manufacturers of hazardous area equipment are often only able to handle a few protection methods, especially in the field of instrumentation and control. This paper shows that today´s hazardous area instrument and control circuits can be laid out as simple as it would be the case for nonhazardous area applications