The levels of these leakages / emissions are usually well below the levels considered dangerous to person as defined by the regulatory bodies e.g. OSHA.

However, these emission levels and therefore the levels prevalent on many beneficiation and manufacturing locations are considerable higher than the acceptable levels for the economic design life of electronic control systems as recommended by the instrumentation specifying authorities for corrosion attack on instrumentation. These specifying authorities are:

EUROPE - Commission Electrotechnique Internationale (CEI)
JAPAN - Japanese Electronic Industry Development Association (JEIDA)
NORTH AMERICA - Instrumentation Society of America (ISA)

Typical recommendation from these bodies advise / suggest the environment in which the electronic control process systems instrumentation are located be classified as:

An environment in which the electronics instrumentation may be expected to survive the economic control design life.

The air systems installed to achieve Level 1 conditions in the rooms housing the electronics instrumentation controls may be:

LEVEL 2
SEVERITY: MODERATE

An environment in which corrosion occurs and may be a factor in determining equipment reliability.

LEVEL 3
SEVERITY: HARSH

An environment in which corrosive attack has a high probability and in which specially designed packaged equipment will be required.

LEVEL 4
SEVERITY: SEVERE

An extremely corrosive atmosphere in which only specially designed and packaged equipment can be expected to survive.

These severity levels are indicated in the chart below.

The Severity Levels of the corrosive gases experienced at the building housing the electronics controls systems should be addressed i.e. with the installation of air purification filter/scrubber units.

Our function is to design and install, and for some Clients maintain, the air treatment systems to address the challenge conditions, (e.g. from Level 3) to the desired target condition (e.g. Level 1) of say the ISA standard.

However, the installation of air purification units to address the corrosive gases which attack the electronics control equipment controlling the process may be only part of the solution.

This is precisely the strength of PURAIRTECH. Most filter suppliers have very little experience with psychometrics of the air treatment systems - that is left up to the air conditioning engineer who has very little knowledge of the filters or the Client's instrumentation control requirements.