Functional safety, Industrial Security and explosion protection for the hydrogen industry

Hydrogen is a highly flammable gas. For safe production, handling and use, you need safety systems to reliably prevent and manage hazardous situations when dealing with hydrogen.

Pilz offers a variety of solutions for controlling and monitoring safety functions. 

Our safety solutions for functional safety:

• Safe small controller PNOZmulti 2 controls and monitors the required safety functions  
• Automation system PSS 4000 is used on large plants and depending on the number of inputs and outputs required
• PNOZmulti 2 and PSS 4000 are certified up to SIL 3 of EN IEC 61511 and satisfy the requirement of EN IEC 61508

Our safety solutions for Industrial Security:

With the increasing digital networking of plants and systems in hydrogen production, storage and hydrogen applications in industry, the topic of Industrial Security must absolutely be taken into consideration in order to protect sensitive plant data. Here too, Pilz offers tried and tested solutions for dealing with threats.

• I.A.M. (Identification and Access Management) provides support from user authentication to operating mode selection, or data and network security to access management.
• Industrial firewall SecurityBridge protects the control network from manipulation through unauthorised access. The online connection is established via a VPN connection with role-based user management (developed in accordance with IEC 62443)

Your benefits at a glance:

• Control and monitor all safety-related functions
• Monitoring of safety functions such as pressure, temperature, current, voltage and leak, gas and flame detection
• Certified hardware: PNOZmulti 2 and PSS 4000 certified up to SIL 3 of EN IEC 61511; satisfy the requirement of EN IEC 61508
• Intuitive software tool: Configurable function blocks – no programming skills required
• High productivity through integrated diagnostics and comprehensive visualisation options

Leakage

Due to its small molecular size, low molecular weight, high diffusibility and low viscosity, hydrogen is hard to contain and can easily escape. Hydrogen leaks pose a serious risk of fire or even explosion. Hydrogen fires are invisible and it should always be assumed that a flame is present.

Fire / ignition

Hydrogen is highly flammable and naturally explosive. It ignites and burns much easier than other fuels, and as one of the lightest elements on earth, it spreads upwards very quickly. Hydrogen flames are invisible, which makes it difficult to localise the fire source. Even technical precautions such as thermal sensors reach their limits here.

Injury through contact

Because hydrogen is normally stored and transported in a compressed state in pressurised hydrogen tanks, it is extremely cold. If hydrogen escapes in this state and makes contact with skin or if the icy vapour of the liquid hydrogen is inhaled, this can lead to burns, frostbite, hypothermia and lung damage.