SIL
Certified safety in standard operation
Plant operators have a keen interest and, moreover, a legal obligation to protect the health and lives of their employees, their material assets and the environment. To reduce this risk for their systems, they must be able to rely on technical certificates.Of all safety certificates, SIL is the most meaningful in practice and therefore represents an undisputed, unequivocally verifiable seal of quality.
What is SIL? SIL stands for ‘Safety Integrity Level’ and specifies the functional safety of an entire safety circuit using four risk categories.
Three of these correspond to the Performance Level (PL), which already describes the reliability of safety components.
These are:
Severity of the possible injury
Frequency and/or duration of the hazard
Possibility to avoid or limit
The performance level results from the combination of these factors; the probability of occurrence of a dangerous failure is added as a fourth criterion for the definition of SIL. The more likely the damage event is to occur, the higher the SIL factor must be. Or vice versa: the higher the SIL, the higher the probability that the functions performed will prevent hazardous situations.
Precise measurements reliably trigger warning systems
An everyday example of a hazardous situation is the failure of a gas detection system in an underground parking garage. If carbon monoxide accumulates in the air, this can lead to people being poisoned. This risk can be contained, for example through gas warning systems, evacuation alarms or automatic fresh air supply if a limit value is exceeded.
Machines and systems are also categorised according to the risk to people and the environment. In extreme cases, the effects of a malfunction can lead to disasters with many fatalities. The demands on control systems are correspondingly high: the highest SIL level is usually required here in order to reduce this risk as much as possible.
ENOTEC developed its analysers with such safety requirements in mind at an early stage. This is because our customers operate chemical plants, furnaces or power stations - and thus create operational environments that must be protected against fires, explosions or gas leaks.
Statistical reliability for decades and centuries
In these areas of application, monitoring systems that meet the demanding SIL2 level are often required in practice. This means that there are 0.0000001 to 0.000001 dangerous failures per operating hour with an average probability of occurrence. Statistically speaking, this corresponds to one failure every 11 to 110 years of operation - not including downtimes, maintenance and repairs.
The strictness of the regulations is due to occupational health and safety as well as environmental protection. The regulations in the European Union are becoming ever stricter, but our customers are also very sensitive when it comes to safety issues. We offer SIL2-certified analysers for a range of applications:
- OXITEC 5000 for monitoring oxygen content
- COMTEC 6000 for monitoring combustion processes
- AQUATEC 1000 for monitoring drying processes
- SILOTEC 8000 for monitoring silos
All have received their SIL2 certification in accordance with DIN EN 61511 and DIN EN 61508.
ENOTEC Analyzers make safety systems permanently reliable
We give two examples of the use of our analyzers here.
Firstly: Silos are continuously monitored against smouldering fires. This means that a fire must be reliably detected, a reaction must be triggered and this reaction must also function reliably. SILOTEC reliably measures the gas composition directly in the silo, despite dust loading. Anomalies that indicate smouldering fires, for example, trigger an alarm and inertisation by introducing nitrogen.
Secondly: In combustion processes in which hazardous or environmentally harmful residues are used, combustion must be complete so that harmful gases are not released into the environment. If the burner fails, the combustion system must therefore be switched off immediately. This emergency situation is recognized by a reliable oxygen measurement, which triggers the shutdown if a certain O2 limit value is exceeded. This is guaranteed by OXITEC and COMTEC.
S Extent of damage
S1 slight injury to one person
S2 serious injury to several people up to and including death of one person
S3 Death of several people
S4 Catastrophic effects with many fatalities
F Probability of residence
F1 rarely to somewhat more often
F2 frequently to constantly
P Hazard prevention / avoidance
P1 possible under certain conditions
P2 hardly possible
W Probability of occurrence
W1 relatively high
W2 low
W3 very low
Certified safety.
Tested quality.
Our equipment meets the highest requirements.
Suitability test in accordance with
DIN EN 15267
Quality management in accordance with
DIN ISO 9001
ATEX test certificate
Our focus has always been on performance and quality
Since 1980, ENOTEC has specialized in the manufacture of devices for gas analysis.
