T O P I C S
Safety: As an Inspector, You're Not Allowed One Mistake
Ultraprobe Tip
Comments & Contributions
Training Schedule
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This newsletter is dedicated to you, the reader with the goal of improving your ultrasonic inspection skills and enhancing your value to your company or clients. As such, we welcome your participation. If you have questions or seek advice about your inspection techniques or programs, or if you wish to share your experiences with others, please e-mail your contributions to us at info@uesystems.com.
Safety: As an Inspector, You're Not Allowed One Mistake
As inspectors, we're exposed to a lot of different environments and conditions. While most situations can appear safe, we have to be aware that there's always something lurking around that can harm us. It can be a slight film of water on a floor that can cause us to slip and fall or an overhanging pipe we don't see when we temporarily remove a hard hat. Or it may be something much more sinister such as steam leaking from a pipe or an arc flash. One mistake is not tolerable. If we don't take care and observe safety precautions, it could be the last mistake we make. This newsletter is focused on electrical safety. Future editions will cover other safety topics.
Lowry Eads has made safety his passion. After 35 years of service in Dupont where he was former chair of the Dupont Corporate Thermography Leadership team and a senior member of the corporate electrical safety team he is now dedicating a good portion of his free time to writing and lecturing about safety. Having been published nationally and internationally on the subjects of infrared, safety and electrical high energy, he graciously accepted a request for an interview about safety for this newsletter.
Click Here to request a complimentary "Electrical High Energy Safety CD with Lowry Eads".
One major area of concern to Lowry is the hazard of arc-flash, which can occur around high energy equipment. There's a distinction between high voltage and high energy equipment. According to Lowry, there's a lot of attention paid to high voltage equipment and rightfully so since there is the concern about being shocked. People can die because they get locked on a conductor and a defibrillation of the heart might occur.
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High Energy equipment failures can be catastrophic. According to Lowry, with high energy an arc can be struck phase to ground or can propagate phase to phase. When this happens it ionizes the atmosphere. Copper vaporizes and when that happens, it accelerates at the same rate as dynamite in a high-energy explosion. The heat from these explosions can reach 35,000°F which is 3 times hotter than the sun. People can get seriously burned with first, second and third degree burns.
To guard against the potential of arc flash, Lowry recommends inspectors wear proper PPE (Personnel Protective Equipment), follow safety standards, and be aware of NFPA 70E for Arc flash safety & Assessment dealing with high energy.
Before opening live equipment perform a "pre-open observation". Do this with an infrared and ultrasound scan. As an example, if an enclosure appears hotter than other equipment on the outside or makes an ultrasonic noise (arcing, corona, etc., don't open it, de-energize it first.
He recommends the new IR spy glasses be installed on enclosed systems as a way of checking the condition of equipment with both Infrared and Ultrasound without having to open doors and remove covers.
Regarding PPE, Lowry has performed assessment where people wore PPE but were injured anyway because the PPE they were wearing was underrated for the task or they might not have worn enough protective layers. The NFPA 70E has a default clause that can help people know what to use, however there should always be an arc flash assessment. Lowry suggests web sites to get information for arc flash assessment. In addition he considers IEEE 1584 the state of the art method for calculating arc flash incident energy. Several power systems short circuit analysis software programs have incorporated this into their products. He recommends the following sites: http://www.easypower.com/arcflash_resource.html and http://www.skm.com/indexa.htm
As he travels the country he is constantly hearing the same complaint about corporate downsizing, "I'm working harder & harder with fewer people and I'm overwhelmed." In effect more demands with fewer staff and a demand on cost cutting may compromise safety. There may be maintenance standards in effect but they might not always get followed due to downsizing.
While Lowry recommends scheduled overhauls for high energy equipment, he recognizes that cost considerations have forced corporate America to rely more on frequent inspections of equipment while cutting back equipment overhaul procedures.
Ultrasound and Infrared inspections, while no substitute for equipment overhaul, are a viable alternative for maintaining equipment health by detecting potential hazardous conditions. Performed often enough, these conditions can be spotted in the early stages of development.
You can get more detailed information from a safety DVD in which Lowry explains the hazards of working around high energy equipment. Suggested safety tips and graphic illustrations will help viewers understand the hazards and how to avoid them. To get your complimentary copy just send us an email: info@uesystems.com or call us at 1-800-223-1325. Tell us you'd like a copy of the "Electrical High Energy Safety CD with Lowry Eads" & we'll ship it right out to you.
Ultraprobe Tip:
When enclosed electrical equipment is energized, scan around the enclosure with the scanning module and the Rubber Focusing Probe. Scan around air vents and door seams. Place the probe tip in direct line of the air path of a door seam and scan at 40 kHz. If the unit is totally enclosed, use the contact probe and touch the enclosure at 25 kHz. If possible, before using the contact probe, test the enclosure with IR for any abnormal heat generation. Also, as Lowry recommends, have the IR sight glasses installed for future inspections.
Comments and Contributions:
Richard Drapczuk of Infra Tech Services has brought up a unique problem related to safety while working around electrical equipment. Wearing shoes with glue adhered rubber soles, and no penetrations, is now part of the safety requirement. However, with today's trend toward chemical compounding and engineering we cannot consider all rubber to be an insulator. Another consideration regarding shoe safety concerns the liquids you may be walking through in your plant environment. If the liquids are conductive or semi-conductive, and bridge the rubber sole to wet the upper, you can create a much lower resistance to ground potential. There have been cases when this was suspected of increasing the severity of an incident. To avoid this he uses Class II galoshes or boots when necessary and high potential tests his rubber soled work shoes when he has concerns.
If you want to ask Richard a question, contact him at: richarddrapczuk@aol.com
Training Schedule:
The Level I classes are filling up fast. We strongly recommend that you register early to get into the class of your choice.
Level I:
June 14-18: San Juan, Puerto Rico
July 12-16: Mexico City, Mexico
August 9-13: Davenport, IA
September 13-17: Toronto, Canada
October 4-8: Los Angeles, CA
November 1-5: Greenville, SC
November 15-19: Chester, UK
Level II
June 14-18: Lebanon, OH
Come join the "Best of the Best" Ultrasound World Conference, October 24-27. The only conference dedicated to Airborne Ultrasound Technology. To learn more:
http://www.uesystems.com/ultrasound-world/uw3emlr.pdf
More articles will be posted periodically. Please check back.
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