Trust Only Proven Methods of Intrinsic Safety

By Thomas P. Ventulett Improving efficiency and productivity without compromising safety is any industrial operation’s top priority. No manufacturing facility nor mission-critical operation can risk its personnel using devices that could cause an explosion. When selecting the best IoT and communications technology for oil and gas, chemical, pharmaceutical and other hazardous locations where combustible materials are present, only the highest certified “intrinsically safe” devices will suffice. Aegex Technologies’ design and production facility, AegexLabs, was established to develop innovative technologies that drive efficiency and safety based on our broad intellectual property portfolio of digital solutions for the most critical and hazardous operating environments. AegexLabs designed and manufactured the Aegex10 Intrinsically Safe Tablet, the world’s first Windows 10 tablet to be certified by governing bodies around the globe for operation in Zone 1 and Division 1 hazardous locations. The tablet is intrinsically safe by design, meaning it cannot produce enough energy or heat to cause an explosion. Lightweight and low-cost, this tablet is designed to move industries into their digital transformation. Some intrinsically safe products gain their certification by encapsulating the device in a heavy and hardened case rather than addressing dangerous concentrations of energy and heat inside the device itself. This method allows for the possibility of an explosion, but the box is expected to contain that explosion, preventing it from igniting the surrounding atmosphere. Aegex tablets, on the other hand, prevent any explosion from happening in the first place because they are designed intrinsically safe at the circuit board and battery level to be incapable of producing enough heat or energy to ignite. By contrast, the iOS iPad, for example, generates 7 times the amount of stored capacitance or energy as the certified Windows Aegex10 Tablet. AegexLabs’ intellectual property, which includes our methods of making devices intrinsically safe, is the difference between Aegex and other IoT hardware manufacturers. Our patents-pending designs range from tablets to sensors to endpoints and gateways, all of which are intrinsically safe. And our dedicated team of engineers is continually developing Aegex’s road map of intrinsically safe products that are changing the way enterprises think about safety, efficiency and productivity in their hazardous industrial operations. Even non-hazardous environments are adopting Aegex intrinsically safe devices in efforts to be best prepared in the case of an emergency situation that would require intrinsically safe equipment. Field trials of all equipment developed at AegexLabs are a fundamental part of ensuring devices perform as designed in “real-world” environments. All products are put through rigorous assessment at field test facility at the Guardian Centers, a premier disaster training facility. Aegex recently demonstrated our tablets and IoT sensors in one of the largest disaster simulation exercises ever held for IoT emergency response and IoT technologies – Operation Convergent Response 2017 (#OCR2017). Held at the Guardian Centers, #OCR2017 was a collaborative effort among Aegex, Verizon and Nokia to demonstrate how our intrinsically safe IoT solutions, paired with more than 40 other cutting-edge IoT and communications technologies, could assist first responders during disasters and possibly prevent future catastrophes. Proving that Aegex intrinsically safe technologies can enable better responses to emergencies showed that they can also protect critical industrial operations. Enterprise operators worldwide who require the safest devices available for Division 1 and Zone 1, or any hazardous area, can count on Aegex IoT solutions for providing real-time connectivity that improves safety, efficiency and productivity in their operations. Why risk operations by permitting even the possibility of an explosion? With Aegex and our team at AegexLabs, you don’t have to. Trust Aegex to provide the best protection for your most precious assets. www.aegex.com