Fast-acting ceramic fuses enhance safety in hazardous environments
Power management company Eaton announced the C308F Bussmann Series of fast-acting, ceramic tube fuses for intrinsic safety requirements used in hazardous environments such as network barriers and other equipment used in mines, oil drilling structures, gas stations, gas meters, chemical refineries and hazardous material transportation.
“Manufacturers of intrinsically safe barrier networks need fast-acting devices that prevent explosions in extremely hazardous conditions,” said Vincent Wang, global product manager for Eaton’s Electronics Division. “This fuse line offers advanced overcurrent protection that meets internationally-defined safety requirements where electrical equipment is required in the presence of highly volatile materials.”
Intrinsic Safety (IS) is universally recognized under the specification EN60079-11, which is a low-energy signaling technique that prevents explosions from occurring during industrial activity by ensuring that the energy transferred to a hazardous area is well below the energy required to initiate an explosion.
The ceramic tube construction of these fuses meets EN60079-11 standards for explosive environments and delivers a high interrupting rating for circuit protection up to 250 volts (V) and 250 milliAmperes (mA) for both alternating current (AC) and direct current (DC) power. These fast-acting C308F fuses provide a high breaking capacity of 4,000 amperes (A) in a compact 3 x 8.4-millimeter size.
The C308F Bussmann series fuses can be used in intrinsically safe devices defined according to the international standard by the International Society for Automation (ANSI/ISA-RP12.6: less than1.5V, less than 0.1A, and less than 25 milliWatt during operation) such as contactors, thermocouples, LEDs, non-inductive potentiometers and resistors. They can also be used for non-simple devices such as transmitters, transducers, solenoid valves, and relays.
