Fieldbus reaches into hazardous areas

The FieldConnex system provides a top to bottom (host to device) range of fieldbus solutions for hazardous and non-hazardous installations.

The FieldConnex system provides a top to bottom (host to device) range of fieldbus solutions for hazardous and non-hazardous installations.

For hazardous area installations, Pepperl+Fuchs recognised that an intrinsically safe fieldbus would never allow the full potential of a fieldbus to be realised, and has taken a new approach for connecting fieldbus devices in hazardous areas.

The heart of this system is a field barrier, which provides a means of connecting intrinsically safe instrumentation to a bus that has an EEx e trunk.

The field barrier can be located in a Zone 1 gas group IIC hazardous area, and comes optionally as a DIN rail mounted version that allows it to fit in with any installation's requirement.

Fieldbus availability is everyone's concern, so Pepperl+Fuchs has introduced a fieldbus power conditioner (with an MTBF of better than 5000 years) that provides 1A to a fieldbus trunk from dual redundant power supplies.

This approach optimises bus availability and avoids the complexity, heat dissipation and low efficiency of other methods.

The FieldConnex system also includes power supplies, repeaters, spur protectors, junction boxes, cables, bus couplers, field mounted valve interfaces and bus terminators.

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