Directive 2014/34/EU of the European Parliament and of the Council regulates the placing on the market of equipment and protective systems intended for use in potentially explosive atmospheres. The importance of using explosion-proof equipment (certified in compliance with provisions of standards for electrical and non-electrical equipment) is crucial for avoiding catastrophic explosion-type events which may result in human victims, important material losses or may have significant consequences upon the environment. The current paper addresses a possible scenario of a pressure vessel explosion and the computational simulation and analysis of the dispersion of hazardous substances (toxic or explosive) released in the environment following the explosion-type event, in order to highlight the possible consequences. Such computational simulations may be of benefit for employers, who wish to take proactive measures in order to increase the occupational health and safety level within their activity. In this regard, results of computational simulations can be integrated by the companies in the development of emergency response plans, aiming at minimizing the hazardous effects of the releases of toxic/explosive gases upon the workers and surrounding atmosphere.
The intrinsic safety type of protection significantly increased in complexity during the last decades. Thus, it even provides the opportunity to use highly complex electronic circuits without involving a significant explosion risk within the oil industry or in power plants, but not limited to those two. In order to achieve this performance, the type of protection is based on three pillars: limiting of energy, heat and also fault tolerance. The potential failure of components, connections, and separations are taken into consideration for intrinsic safety evaluations. This paper focuses on scenarios of separation faults in intrinsic safety circuits. The introduction part of the paper provides a summary of requirements for the intrinsic safety type of protection. The separation requirements are also highlighted. This part also explains the "countable" concept regarding the separation faults. The second part of the paper is dedicated to the fault scenarios assessment. Also, this part shows the theoretical model which yields the magnitude of the fault scenarios group. The built-up algorithm for effective localization of the separation faults on a real electronic board is presented in the second part of the paper. This algorithm was implemented using Visual Basic for Applications script and National Instruments Ultiboard software. In the third part of the article, the obtained results are reported and discussed. In order to have a comprehensive image, there was proposed a graph in which links are considered separation distances and elements conductive tracks. Another tool proposed and used was separation distances histogram. The influence of increased finesse on the number of non-countable separation faults was also discussed. The main outcome of the paper is represented by the high impact of non-countable separation faults number over the number of separation failure scenarios. For example, the circuit analysis showed the potential for over sixteen million failure scenarios.
Industrial activity and not only, generates both emissions and immissions of pollutants into the atmosphere. Thus, their magnitude and dynamics will present a specific footprint for each pollutant. The article aims to identify immission profiles using tools specific to artificial intelligence applied to a wide set of recordings of environmental parameters. The first part briefly presents the issue of environmental protection and specific regulations at national and European level, and the second part showcases the database of environmental parameters and the theoretical model of data processing. The last part of the paper is dedicated to results obtained and their analysis which shows the presence of emissions patterns (profiles) measured in different locations and time periods. Seasonality and its impact on emission profiles were also analysed. On this occasion, the use of the Hurst exponent allowed the segregation of various time series of data based on the resulting memory interpreted as a measure of immissions’ persistence. Jumps in the temporal dimension of values allowed the anonymous association of immissions with different locations. Analysis of the topology of clusters associated with immission profiles highlighted the presence of two types: rare clusters and dense clusters. Rare clusters can be associated with immission having accidental dynamics and dense clusters can be associated with systematic immissions. Use of the framed method allows for a classification of pollutants resulting in increased chances of solving the environmental impact.
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