SYNOPSIS

The risk of explosions in the facilities such as mobile and fixed offshore facilities, refineries, petrochemical plants entail high risks for their workers and the surrounding environment. The explosion risks to the industries of oil & gas and mining are obvious but please do not forget the industries like sugar refineries, flour mills, food processing plants, grain handling and storage, painting also have to deal with these explosive environments.  Equipment used in explosive environments must therefore have a high level of safety to minimize these risks and contain their potential consequences. The objective of this presentation is to promote and increase the safety awareness (to avoid the risk of explosions) to these facilities owners and their workers on maintaining the integrity of their equipment used in these explosive environments, in IEC60079 approach. The equipment used in these environments needs to be studied, designed, procured, installed, maintained and repaired to avoid the explosion risk.

The explosion risks can be determined by the existence of an explosive atmosphere together with an ignition source. It depends upon a clear identification of the likelihood of an explosive atmosphere and the assessment of the consequences of a hazard to different parts of the plant. This is defined as the hazardous area zone concept and will be explained briefly in the presentation.

Besides the brief explanation of zone concept, the selection of the equipment, defined as the Explosion Protection Level (EPL), used and installed in this identified Zone, as well as the strategies to maintaining the integrity of these equipment from their whole life cycle will be discussed. During the presentation, the regulation requirement and the process of conformity assessment for the equipment will be highlighted too. At the end of the presentation, two case studies will be shared


BIODATA OF SPEAKERS

Ir. Tung Pang Khien is the Lead Electrical & Instrumentation Engineer in the Technical Centre South East Asia of Bureau Veritas Malaysia. As a certified IECEx competent personnel since 2014, he is the IECEx focal person of Bureau Veritas Malaysia with the accountabilities to lead the electrical & instrumentation team in the subject of IECEx. He and his team work locally, regionally and internationally for ensuring product conformity to the IEC 60079 code series. He is also the lead auditor to audit the plant facilities prior to start-up. In Bureau Veritas, he is involved in design appraisal, project delivery of fixed and floating offshore platforms and petrochemical plants in engineering compliance certification projects. He received his B.Sc degree in Electrical Power Engineering from the University of Tenaga Nasional in 2004 and MBA with emphasis on management and finance from the University of Malaya in 2014. His 16 years of engineering experience spans across various phases of the projects where he involved the certification activities for FEED, detailed design, fabrication/ installations, operations, maintenance and damage assessment for both green and brown field opportunities.

Mr. Mohammad Faris bin Azmi is currently the Senior Electrical & Instrumentation Engineer in the Technical Centre South East Asia of Bureau Veritas Malaysia. He is IECEx 001, 007 and 008 certified. Possessed a Bachelor’s Degree of Electrical System Engineering from Universiti Malaysia Perlis in 2010, he started his career as Project Engineer with Digistar Holdings, the market leader in Extra Low Voltage (ELV) segment of Malaysia and moving forward as Operation & Maintenance Engineer with Veolia Water, the global leader in Waste Water & Environmental services before joining Bureau Veritas back in 2013. In his current position, he is entrusted to perform 3rd Party Conformity Assessment for several major certification projects, and to bring forward Hazardous Area (Ex) projects in terms of developing business proposals and participating in Ex Inspection campaigns. Recently completed 2 major offshore projects with regards to Hazardous Area (Ex) Inspection & Maintenance, he is able to share some insights from the perspective of third party certification body, which is imperative in order to achieve the same goal independently as what Client intends; full compliance of IEC 60079 for the optimization of Assets (People & Equipment).