As mobility in harsh and volatile industrial and manufacturing environments has become a necessity for productivity, safety, monitoring, and management, intrinsically safe circuit design has had to meet stringent regulatory device needs. Making matters more challenging for device manufactures are the varied environments, product features, and complex requirements of meeting regulatory compliance for intrinsic safety. The definition of intrinsically safe lies at the heart of this challenge.Intrinsic safety requirements apply to any device operated in areas where flammable gases, fuels or dust are present. The device must provide preventive protection in its electronic circuit design and physical structure when used in explosive atmospheres. These devices must be designed in such a way that they will not release enough energy to cause ignition of flammable material. Just a few of the more obvious Industries which require Intrinsically Safe devices include:
  • Oil and gas
  • Pharmaceutical
  • Aircraft maintenance
  • Chemical refining
  • Power generation
  • Metal smelting and refining
  • Plastics manufacturers
The regulations and requirements governing intrinsic safety for any device that must be certified and manufactured for use in volatile environments are varied. There are two main regulatory bodies and certification:
  • ATEX (Atmosphere Explosive)
  • IECEx (International Electrotechnical Commission Explosive)
Both have complex zone requirements driving intrinsically safe circuit design standards across the globe.While there are a number of suppliers offering tablet PCs, smart phones, handheld computing devices or cases reported to be intrinsically safe, there are vast needs for mobile handheld intrinsically safe devices for specialized use cases in highly specific environments such as complex measurement and scanning devices.