If the primary and secondary explosion protection measures are not enough, additional protective measures shall be taken. The purpose of these is to limit the impact of an explosion and/or to reduce it to an occupational health and environmental safe level. The most common measures to limit the hazardous effects of explosion are as follows: – Explosion-resistant design: containers, apparatus, pipelines are built to be pressure shock resistant in order to withstand an explosion inside.
– Explosion relief: bursting discs or explosion flaps are deployed which open in a safe direction if an explosion occurs and make sure that the plant is not subjected to strain over and above its explosion resistance.
– Explosion suppression and preventing propagation of the explosion: Explosion suppression systems prevent attainment of the maximum explosion pressure by rapidly injecting extinguishing agents into containers and plant. Explosion decoupling restricts possible explosions to individual parts of the plant.specify the risk in the area precisely and help the operating equipment manufacturer to select a suitable solution for the operating equipment and finally they help the installation engineer to select and assign the suitable Ex Equipment. Ultimately, this data is found in the Ex Equipment labelling. The procedures for applying secondary explosion protection measures will be described in greater detail in the following chapter.
