A paper presented at ICIAS 2016 in Kuala Lumpur notes the potential of explosion-proof LED lighting, or ‘ExLED lighting’, for use in hazardous areas of offshore oil and gas facilities.
The piece by K Arumuggam, MSAFB Mustafa and AWB Jafar particularly points out the overall financial savings that can be made over the lifecycle of explosion-proof LED lighting, factoring in characteristics like initial purchase price, running costs and maintenance expenditure.
In their introduction, the authors write: “This paper explains the advantages of using ExLED lightings in hazardous areas and presents the significant total cost of ownership savings that can be achieved through a lifecycle cost analysis performed for explosion-proof LED and conventional lightings, for a period of ten years for a particular platform module.”
Of course ExLED lighting offers other benefits in hazardous areas, particularly in challenging environments like offshore gas and oil rigs, by reducing the risks of a disastrous incident occurring in those areas.
This can mean avoiding the presence of hot luminaires or exposed filaments that could spark an explosion, as well as putting in place reliable emergency lighting to allow for evacuations and other essential personnel movements in any circumstances.
