IEC conference at R. Stahl

The IEC Tech­ni­cal Com­mit­tee 31 con­fer­ence, which start­ed on 25th March 2019, attract­ed around 200 experts in explo­sion pro­tec­tion from all over the world to Walden­burg. The com­pa­ny, which has been heav­i­ly involved in the IEC for the last decades, and which has sent eight of its own par­tic­i­pants to this con­fer­ence, was respon­si­ble for organ­is­ing the event at its own headquarters.

The TC 31 of the Inter­na­tion­al Elec­trotech­ni­cal Com­mis­sion is tasked with draw­ing up and updat­ing inter­na­tion­al stan­dards in explo­sion pro­tec­tion. To this end, experts from around 30 nations came togeth­er and met in 24 dif­fer­ent work­ing com­mit­tees for two weeks. A num­ber of the deci­sions made are ben­e­fi­cial for the longevi­ty of advanced tech­ni­cal solu­tions, which are wel­comed by many plant oper­a­tors as well as machin­ery and equip­ment man­u­fac­tur­ers. The experts made deci­sions on sev­er­al impor­tant stan­dards for tech­nol­o­gy which con­tin­ues to be state of the art – this result­ed in their sta­bil­i­ty dates, or the validi­ties of the cur­rent ver­sions, being offi­cial­ly extend­ed. This con­cerns the fol­low­ing stan­dards: 60079–18 “Encap­su­la­tion”, 60079–19 “Repair” and 60079–28 “Opti­cal radiation”.

In oth­er cas­es, prac­ti­cal fur­ther devel­op­ments are immi­nent. This includes con­vert­ing the Tech­ni­cal Spec­i­fi­ca­tion “Haz­ardous areas – Part 43: Devices under unfavourable oper­at­ing con­di­tions” into a stan­dard. This is tar­get­ed both at extreme cold and extreme heat and oth­er excep­tion­al­ly demand­ing con­di­tions. The com­mit­tee work is expect­ed to con­tin­ue at the next meet­ing end of Octo­ber in Chi­na. Both the par­tic­i­pants and the host, R. Stahl, were delight­ed with the pro­duc­tiv­i­ty of the con­fer­ence and the favourable con­di­tions in Walden­burg. All par­ties were pos­i­tive to hold the con­fer­ence again at the same loca­tion in the future.