Weighing in Hazardous Areas

Designing Safety into a Weighing System

Intrinsic safety (IS) is a protection technique for the safe operation of electrical equipment in hazardous areas by limiting electrical and thermal energy, available for ignition to safe levels.

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Safe, Easy Solutions for Weighing in Hazardous Areas

For potentially hazardous Class I, Div. 1 environments, Hardy Process Solutions has designed safety into its components with an appropriate level of protection for different applications. Hardy recommends using intrinsically safe low-energy components in hazardous areas (including load cells, scales, and summing boxes) and limiting power and current to them through intrinsic barriers that prevent energy from crossing over from the safe area.

For Tanks, Vessels, Mixers or Reactors, a Typical Weighing System Configuration for a Hazardous Area: Use Intrinsically Safe Barriers to prevent energy and current from instruments in the safe area from crossing over to low energy equipment in the hazardous area.

Hardy Weight Processors and Weight & Rate Controllers use proprietary technologies that have great value for Hazardous Area applications and confined spaces. Our C2® Electronic Calibration allows calibration of the weighing system without ever entering the environment. Conversely, Integrated Technician® is used for system diagnostics and troubleshooting from the safety of the safe area thereby reducing risk to operators. Other features such as WAVERSAVER® are used to eliminate the effects of vibration on the weight signal so only Stable Weight is communicated to the Control System.

Hardy’s single-slot Rockwell® PLC/PAC modules read and condition data from strain gauge load cells and communicate it over the I/O chassis backplane to the processor. They provide basic weight data or are loaded with sophisticated algorithms to perform application-specific industrial weighing processes from simple batch weighing to loss-in-weight control, filling, or dispensing. Modules are available for Allen-Bradley® ControlLogix®, CompactLogix®, Micro800®, or POINT I/O chassis.

Floor & Bench Scale Weighing System Configuration For a Hazardous Area: Use Intrinsically Safe Floor or Bench Scales with built in summing cards and IS Barriers to prevent energy from instruments in the safe area from crossing over to low energy IS scales in the hazardous area.