FCI responds to safety integrity level regulations by expanding range of compliant products
Published by Nicholas Woodroof,
Editor
World Pipelines,
The process industries have seen a number of changes in the design and implementation of emergency shutdown/safety systems over the past two decades. Today, compliance with the various international and regional safety standards requires a more rigorous approach to the overall safety lifecycle of a system, compared to the dependence on the best engineering design practices of the past.
Consequently, a significant increase in the implementation of these standards has been noted within the instrumentation and control industry. The standards most commonly referenced in the process industries are: IEC 61511: Functional Safety - Safety Instrumented Systems for the Process Industry Sector; ANSI/ISA-84.00.01 (IEC 61511 Mod) - Functional Safety: Safety Instrumented Systems for the Process Industry Sector; and IEC 61508: Functional Safety of Electrical, Electronic and Programmable Electronic Safety Related Systems. The continuous global focus on improved safety within the chemical, oil and gas, petroleum refining, and other hazardous industries is driving these standards.
Fluid Components International (FCI) has expanded its offering of safety integrity level (SIL) compliant thermal flow meters, liquid/gas flow switches and level switches in response to the requirements of these flow and level instruments.
The company has designed, tested and manufactured its thermal sensor technology mass flow meters, flow switches and level switches. The result is the industry’s largest offering of SIL compliant thermal dispersion technology instrumentation products.
SIL compliance is only one piece of the data required to meet the requirements of these standards, but it continues to be the initial focus of inquiries. Reliable failure rate data is equally critical when it comes to evaluating the impact an individual sensor will have on the overall safety instrumented system (SIS) design and validating that particular safety instrumented function (SIF) being used to calculate safe failure fraction (SFF) of a product, evaluate required hardware fault tolerance (HFT) and allowing a design engineer to perform PFDavg calculations.
To ensure that FCI provides unbiased failure rate data, the company utilises independent, authorised third-parties, such as exida and TÜV Nord, to perform the FMEDA (failure modes, effects and diagnostics analysis) per IEC 61508 for its thermal flow meters and switches.
Read the article online at: https://www.worldpipelines.com/regulations-and-standards/25012018/fci-responds-to-safety-integrity-level-regulations-by-expanding-range-of-compliant-products/
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