Yes that’s right – Crowcon is another year wiser making our business 45 years old. From the humble beginning of gas engineers wanting to improve the safety of their workplace, to today, where our detectors are used in 100’s of applications across tens of thousands of sites worldwide, one thing remains; our focus on Saving Lives!
Continue reading “Celebrating 45 years of Gas Detection with photography!”
Calibration of gas detectors is vital to be sure that they are in good working order and able to alert the user to gas hazards in their vicinity. A calibration is a “resetting” of the detector’s response against a known concentration of target gas, in a balance of synthetic air or nitrogen. This will determine the relationship between the detector’s reading and the actual concentration of the component gas of interest. Adjustment involves modification of the detectors response to bring the reading into line with what is expected while exposing the instrument to the known source. This is fundamentally different to bump testing which is a brief exposure to gas in order to verify that the sensors respond within a specific boundary and the detector’s alarms function properly.
Here is our final video in the series illustrating the working of hydrocarbon gas detecting sensors. This time, we show the basic mode of operation of an infrared (IR) sensor for flammable gases.
Infrared emitters within the sensor each generate beams of IR light . Each beam is of equal intensity and is deflected by a mirror within the sensor on to a photo-receiver, which measures the level of IR received. The “measuring” beam, with a frequency of around 3.3μm, is absorbed by hydrocarbon gas molecules, so the beam intensity is reduced . The “reference” beam (around 3.0μm) is not absorbed, so arrives at the receiver at full strength. The %LEL of gas present is determined by the difference in intensity between the beams measured by the photo-receiver.
There are many things to consider when selecting the best gas detector, and cost is not the least of them. But how many of you consider total cost of ownership?
Once the desired specification has been determined, there are likely to be a number of detectors, available over a range of purchase prices, that come close enough to meeting that spec to be considered. But the purchase price is not the only cost associated with owning a gas detector. There are also on-going costs of maintenance, which can be significant over the life-time of a unit.
So, other than purchase price, what kinds of things should be considered when thinking about cost of ownership?
Gas detection is a critical safety function in many industries, to protect people from harm and avoid costly plant disruption or damage. Not only must you use a suitable instrument for the task and the environment, but it must be used correctly and maintained properly if it is to fully serve its purpose.
As a founding member of CoGDEM (the Council of Gas Detection and Environmental Monitoring), we are really pleased that the Communities Minister, Penny Mordaunt, has made it mandatory for private landlords to install smoke and carbon monoxide (CO) alarms in rented properties.
The key to reducing risk – spend less time exposed to hazards! Technological advances, driven by increasing safety awareness, are providing opportunities to reduce detector maintenance and therefore also reduce the amount of time operators must spend handling detectors and transmitters in hazardous areas.
Andy, Crowcon’s Senior Product Manager, has reviewed the benefits that these developments bring.
We often get questions on flammable gases and whether we can detect them, therefore this week’s blog looks at some of the characteristics that are important to understand and know before you can consider if it can be detected.
Continue reading “The characteristics of flammable gas detection”
Working in Technical Support, one of the most common questions from customers is for bespoke configurations of toxic gas sensors. This frequently leads to an investigation into the cross sensitivity of the different gases that the sensor will be exposed to.
Cross sensitivity responses will vary from sensor type to sensor type, and suppliers often express the cross sensitivity in percentages while others will specify in actual parts-per-million (ppm) levels.
A common question we encounter at Crowcon is when to use a pump or aspirator with a portable gas detection device. I’d like to share some thoughts about the use of personal detectors with pumps or aspirators as part of an effective confined space pre-entry check.
