Evolving Industry Standards Pave The Way For A Broader Use Of Wireless Gas Detection

National codes such as the NFPA 72, National Fire Alarm and Signaling Code, National Fire Alarm Protection Association, and international standards like EN 60079-29 provide considerable prescriptive guidance and performance-based requirements on how fire and gas systems should be designed and deployed within a facility.

IEC performance-based standards

Process plants and facilities also look to the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) which has promulgated performance-based standards like IEC 61508 (Functional safety of electrical/electronic/programmable electronic safety-related systems) and IEC 61511 (Functional safety – Safety instrumented systems for the process industry sector).

Using these IEC performance-based standards as a foundation, technical committees composed of certified functional safety experts (CFSE) from the largest process operators in the world have provided informative guidance through technical reports, like the ISA Technical Report (TR) 84.00.07 ‘Guidance on the Evaluation of Fire, Combustible Gas, and Toxic Gas System Effectiveness’, as well as ISA Technical Report (TR) 84.00.08 ‘Guidance for the Application of Wireless Sensor Technology to Non-SIS Independent Protection Layers.’

Taken together, operators can have better guidance on how to evaluate and deploy wireless gas detection in their plants.

remote monitoring

The application of wireless gas detectors can be extended to a broader system

Virtually every major petrochemical or chemical operator has historically started from a position where wireless devices are allowed for remote monitoring or in-plant monitoring only.

With technical reports such as the ISA TR 84.00.08, the application of wireless gas detectors can be extended to a broader system, i.e. a non-SIS Independent Protection Layer (IPL). 

Wireless gas detectors

Wireless gas detectors offer operators the opportunity to increase their gas coverage density at half the cost compared to wired gas detectors.

Wireless gas detectors can be flexibly deployed at any location, building a pervasive sensing environment for IPLs to enhance the protection of personnel, provide more inputs for asset integrity management, as well as aid in environmental regulatory compliance.