By Becca Dodds, Marketing Manager, Mobile Gas Management, Draeger Safety UK
Safety technology in the water industry has made significant advances in recent years, not least in the field of gas safety.
Industry 4.0 and the ongoing automation of traditional industrial practices using smart technology has played a prominent role in these advances, with greater digitalisation and connectivity transforming key areas of safety in many sectors, including the water industry.
This is particularly true in relation to gas detection, a prominent safety concern in the water industry where reliable and accurate monitoring of a wide range of gases (such as methane, hydrogen sulphide, chlorine and ozone) is a critical and life-saving requirement to ensure the safety of engineers and other personnel.
This aspect of workplace safety has become of even greater importance in light of changing working practices and the increase in lone worker environments, where the safety risks are greater without direct supervision or anyone to help if things go wrong.
As a result, the introduction of safety technology advances has been particularly significant. For example, portable gas monitoring devices – issued to field engineers – can be individually linked to cloud based software to provide a connected smart safety solution: particularly valuable if an employee is working alone.
This type of smart and integrated gas safety system allows for live monitoring, where key information is displayed in the cloud, and therefore accessed from anywhere via an online dashboard/web interface. Information such as the location of colleagues and the status of their gas safety can be identified at any given moment. Furthemore, if an alarm is activated by any individual device, colleagues and managers will be immediately and automatically alerted to the risk, and able to view the key information displayed on the connected portal. This data can be shared with emergency services, allowing them to better manage an emergency if needed, and all data is stored securely for later analysis.
In addition, advances in technology mean that it is possible to link portable gas detectors with lone worker smartphones, providing additional, streamlined functionality across areas of safety that often co-exist.
Such technological advances are particularly useful due to the fact that they do not create a need for any additional hardware, therefore saving on the cost of acquiring new devices or a brand new system. Instead, communication between a user’s smartphone and portable gas detection device enable alarms to be triggered either via a user’s smartphone or via a small external Bluetooth-connected key fob, as well as automatically via ‘person-down detection’ should a worker become incapacitated, or following the detection of elevated or dangerous levels of gases.
In parallel to the advancements in digitalisation and connected safety systems, we are also seeing the use of technology such as infrared (IR) sensors to monitor for biogas – mostly a mixture of methane and carbon dioxide. Biogas is a renewal energy source resulting from anaerobic digestion systems, which is growing in popularity as a more environmentally friendly way of dealing with wastewater sludge, but which also requires robust detection measures.
Further supplementary technology is available in the form of a flame detector which provides an additional layer of safety where there are high risks of flammable gases. This is a visual flame detection system that uses digital image processing and advanced algorithms to process and interpret flame characteristics. A UV/IR flame detector consists of ultraviolet (UV) and infrared (IR) sensors in a single piece of equipment. UV sensors work by detecting the UV radiation emitted by the flame and are sensitive to a wide range of flammable fuels including hydrocarbons and ammonia. These can also be connected to the aforementioned management system so that they can alert users to danger, enabling evasive action to be taken quickly, so that any risk to life is reduced, as well as reducing the risk of fire damage.
As safety in the water industry comes under ever growing scrutiny by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE), it is clear that well-designed and forward-thinking connected and digital gas safety systems, using the latest available technology, provide highly effective and reliable ways to safeguard those exposed to some of the most common safety risks.
