Equipment operating in installations endangered by the occurrence of potentially explosive atmospheres have special features designed in order to make them suitable for operations in such areas. Equipment designed for use in potentially explosive atmospheres shall be placed on the EU market considering the provisions of the ATEX Directive 2014/34/EU and the harmonized European standards under this Directive. Even if equipment is placed on the EU market in accordance with ATEX Directive 2014/34/EU provisions, the special characteristics providing protection to explosion can be invalidated in installation design, erection, operation, inspection, maintenance or repairing phases. In order to prevent invalidation of explosion protection characteristics an important accent is placed on training and authorization of personnel involved in design, mounting, operation, inspection, maintenance or repairing of equipment/installations operating in potentially explosive atmospheres.
The special characteristics providing protection to explosion for equipment design for use in potentially explosive atmospheres must be preserved during their entire period of use. Thus, the equipment designed for use in potentially explosive atmosphere shall be subjected to specific inspections in order to verify that the characteristics on which explosion protection is based were not depreciated in time. The purpose of the paper is to underline the importance of inspections in case of equipment intended to be used in potentially explosive atmospheres and to provide specific recommendations in this matter.
In order to investigate the degree of pollution by heavy metals, mining water samples were subjected to analysis, using inductively coupled plasma optical spectrometry method. An experimental module was developed and the water treatment capacity of natural zeolites was studied. The contaminated water was passed through 3 columns filled with zeolites, under static and dynamic mode in order to optimize the ion exchange process. Experiments were performed using different particle sizes of zeolite, and in different pH conditions. In this study, the degree of treatment in static conditions was performed, when a purification degree of 97.04% for zinc and 96.70% for manganese was obtained. In dynamic operation, the purification degree was lower, 81 % for manganese and 93% for zinc.
As hot spot mapping has become an usual technique used worldwide in order to obtain a clearer view on the geographic incidence of several factors from the most diverse fields, this paper aims to present a case study (developed late 2020 and early 2021) regarding air quality status of Craiova – an important Romanian city – involving the most relevant three gaseous air pollutants. The study has been realized by using a modern technique for generating hot spot maps on grids, as smooth continuous surfaces, which is Kernel Density Estimation (KDE).
The present work reports the results of a study performed by gamma spectral analysis, on different soil samples collected from Petrosani -Romanian city placed in an important coal mining area. The purpose of this research is to estimate the gamma dose rate in the out-door air (at a height of 1 m above the ground), in order to compare the results obtained to the annual effective limit dose value received by the population, which is 1 mSv/year. A modern statistical method -Monte Carlo simulation -was used to perform the study. By estimating the mean activity concentrations for the primordial decay chains (those of Radium-226 and Thorium-232), as well as the mean activity concentration for the Potassium-40 radioisotope, the gamma dose rate received by the public in Petrosani was evaluated; this is proved to be lower than the maximum admitted value, so the study leads to the conclusion that the inhabitants are not dangerously exposed to gamma radiation caused by radioisotopes present in soil.
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