Pepperl+Fuchs to introduce DART tech

Global industrial products manufacturer Pepperl+Fuchs has announced its plans to launch an advanced technology 'DART' in India aimed at avoiding explosion in hazardous area operations, including refineries and chemical plants.

Germany-based Pepperl+Fuchs (PLF) is targeting major refinery players like Reliance and ONGC among others to deploy its new technology 'Dynamic Arc Recognition and Termination' (DART), company's CEO Gunther Kegel told reporters.

DART is a solution that instead of completely avoiding a spark, helps to handle it if it happens. The solution allows more devices to be connected to one power supply due to high power availability and thereby enable hazardous areas to be treated as normal areas for all instrumentation and automation appliances, he said.

Traditionally, Intrinsic Safety Technology is used to avoid explosions in plant by means of limiting the electrical power going into the field using power limits circuits which otherwise would produce 'sparkôarc' to ignite the explosive materials present in hazardous area of process plants.

"Whereas DART technology allows such high power, which is capable of generating an arc/spark into the hazardous area of the process plant but it avoids explosion to happen by detecting chances of such arc or spark in advance and terminating it before it peaks cause such ignition," he said.