Explosion Protection Concepts

Several methods may be adopted to make electrical equipment safe to use in potentially explosive atmospheres - these are conventionally described as ‘types of protection’.

The choice of which type of protection to adopt is based upon aiming to achieve an acceptable or tolerable risk based upon the probability of a flammable atmosphere being present, balanced against the risk of an ignition source from equipment installed.

The selection criteria of the different types of protection against the EPL/category requirements are given in the tables below.