Advice on designing an electrostatic-proof building please.

[Mark42]

Yes I shoot, also section 5

S5 is rare, well done! Anyone who can deal with the Home Office and retain their sanity deserves respect .

 

[Julie.]

S5 is rare, well done! Anyone who can deal with the Home Office and retain their sanity deserves respect .

Scottish Government!

Also who said I retained my sanity?

 

[KennyKen]

Three types of Hazardous Areas are recognised as follows:
• Group II - Hazardous Areas (gas or vapour) in which an explosive atmosphere is present, or may be expected to be present, in quantities such as to require special precautions for the construction, installation and use of the equipment.
• Group III - Hazardous Area (dust) in which combustible dust in cloud form is, or can be expected to be present, in quantities such as to require special precautions for the construction and use of equipment in order to prevent ignition of an explosive dust/air mixture.
• Explosives Hazardous Areas – An area in which explosives material/substances of Explosives Ordnance are exposed to the atmosphere such that they require special precautions for the construction and use of equipment in order to prevent ignition of an explosives material/substance.

sound suspiciously like the material your working with... These rules don’t just apply to the Oil & Gas and offshore industries mate.

 

[pc1966]

Update: I just checked, it appears Unitrunk only sell direct from their own places, and there's no central tel number, only published (massive) list prices and an email form. They appear to be one of those companies which makes it hard to buy from them. Marketing

Some others also do socket fittings. You might have more luck with this:

Cable management - overhead | Legrand United Kingdom

www.legrand.co.uk

I found it easy to get the Unitrunk stuff from Holland House (oddly enough a Scottish electrical trade suppler, one of the oldest).

 

[Mark42]

Three types of Hazardous Areas are recognised as follows:
...
• Explosives Hazardous Areas – An area in which explosives material/substances of Explosives Ordnance are exposed to the atmosphere such that they require special precautions for the construction and use of equipment in order to prevent ignition of an explosives material/substance.

sound suspiciously like the material your working with... These rules don’t just apply to the Oil & Gas and offshore industries mate.

Eh? Where did that badly-written rubbish come from?

I've been working with this stuff for 40 years but have never read that before.

I can't believe that's from a UK or European document. Whichever genius wrote '... explosives material/substances of Explosives Ordnance are exposed to the atmosphere [sic] ...' clearly has no experience of working with energetics.

That is a fine example of exactly the kind of nonsense that gets into the literature, then is parroted by an enforcing authority without understanding. I'm not having a go at you, mate, but I've been dealing with this 'legislative' cr@p for decades and it irritates me

In the UK we have the HSW Act, and the subsidiary SI 2014 No. 1638 The Explosives Regulations 2014.

In essence they require you to take reasonable precautions, considering all the circumstances of each case. Therefore the requirements are very different if you wish to set up a nitroglycerine factory producing 1000 tonnes a year, and if you want to hold a few grams in an experimental lab for a day.

Excuse the rant, but essentially my policy is to identify actual risk (in this case static sparks) then to use common sense.

Only rarely do flames shoot out of 13A sockets. Or at least from those which I wired they don't.

So far

 

[KennyKen]

Well that’s straight from the compEX list of definitions. A standard used by every global Hazardous area company, and no offence I know which argument I would believe. OK. Your dealing with “Grams” irrespective of large factories. Your Duty of care is to ensure that your install ensures that the risk is ALARP. I wouldn’t be reliant on a 13amp B&Q socket for that.

 

[static zap]

..Do have a vague memory of an Electrostatic Field detector .. that would would wail with big field changes , down side was it used handpicked CMOS inputs
left in a ZAPABLE open circuit state + attached to paddle antennas ..
(but I'll have to trawl internet history from pre 1998 )
( Moving any midly conductive object in an electric field --Can add energy to its stored charge - An induction technique )
... capacitively detecting any charges moving about nearby .... assuming no strong AC fields upset it.
(any missing -r-s due to iffy keyboard.)

 

[Mark42]

Well that’s straight from the compEX list of definitions. A standard used by every global Hazardous area company, and no offence I know which argument I would believe. OK. Your dealing with “Grams” irrespective of large factories. Your Duty of care is to ensure that your install ensures that the risk is ALARP. I wouldn’t be reliant on a 13amp B&Q socket for that.

Oh well, I tend to believe the opinion of someone who’s actually worked with live explosives for 40 years and still has all appendages attached. Now where would I find one of them?

I’m interested by what mechanism you believe the presence of an empty and shuttered quality 13A metallic socket could cause the ignition of say 5g of nitrocellulose in a crucible a metre away. If there’s something I don’t know I genuinely want to learn. I’m a scientist by nature and training: the only thing a scientist knows for certain is that he or she doesn’t know much.

I accept that many guidelines are there to be idiot proof. Eg exclude sockets so no fool can plug in a soldering iron or fan heater. But I will be excluding not only static from my lab, but fools as well.

ps. What’s compEX? I’ve never heard of it.

 

[pc1966]

Oh well, I tend to believe the opinion of someone who’s actually worked with live explosives for 40 years and still has all appendages attached. Now where would I find one of them?

As Derek Lowe put it:

Hexanitro? Say what? I’d call for all the chemists who’ve ever worked with a hexanitro compound to raise their hands, but that might be assuming too much about the limb-to-chemist ratio.

I accept that many guidelines are there to be idiot proof. Eg exclude sockets so no fool can plug in a soldering iron or fan heater. But I will be excluding not only static from my lab, but fools as well.

That is a factor for this forum - what sort of load(s) are you planning?

To my untrained eye with explosives, keeping the opportunities for electrical incidents down is a starting point, and then taking steps to limit the worst-case let-through energy if there is a fault, the second step.

For example, if you have no loads above 5A or so, you might chose a few radial sockets with 10A MCBs for your "13A" sockets, and have the whole system backed up by, say, a 32A BS88 fuse as an ultimate energy-limiter compared to MCBs at high fault currents.

 

[Mark42]

Well that’s straight from the compEX list of definitions. A standard used by every global Hazardous area company, and no offence I know which argument I would believe. OK. Your dealing with “Grams” irrespective of large factories. Your Duty of care is to ensure that your install ensures that the risk is ALARP. I wouldn’t be reliant on a 13amp B&Q socket for that.

Tell you what though, I’d be with you when it comes to major storage magazines. I’ve just watched a video from Beirut today. That was one astounding bang, the shockwave created its own meteorological effect. I reckon that was tens, if not hundreds of tonnes of HE, all going off at once. Not ideal.