Brief description of energy cut-off and Lockout tagout
With industrial production efficiency continuously improve, more and more automated production line equipment and facilities, also produced a lot of security problems in the process of application, because the risk of automation equipment or facilities energy has not been effectively controlled and cause mechanical injury accident occurred from year to year, to staff person bring serious injury and even death, causing great damage.
Lockout tagout system is a widely adopted measure to control the dangerous energy of automation equipment and facilities (hereinafter referred to as equipment and facilities). This measure originated from the United States and is regarded as one of the effective measures to control the dangerous energy. However, in the use of "fetch", there are often many problems. For example, Lockout tagout is a padlock, regardless of the process and system management and control, any task carried out on equipment and facilities, are protected by Lockout tagout, which leads to a lot of contradictions in security and production. Since I have little knowledge and confusion about the hazardous energy control of equipment and facilities, I also want to have a deeper understanding of this topic, so I collected materials and articles from many parties, sorted out and summarized this article to help deepen my understanding.
First of all, what is a dangerous energy? What is a dangerous power cut? What is Lockout tagout? What is a zero energy state. In this, what is the correlation and connection.
Dangerous energy refers to the power source contained in equipment and facilities that can cause dangerous movement. Some dangerous energy, such as electric energy and heat energy, can be clearly paid attention to by people, but some dangerous energy, such as hydraulic pressure, air pressure and compression energy of spring, are not easy to be paid attention to. Lockout tagout is used to lock the dangerous energy in the equipment and facilities and cut off the energy source, so that the energy source is locked and disconnected, so as to ensure that the equipment and facilities cannot move. Dangerous energy cutting refers to the use of cutting or isolation devices to cut off the dangerous energy in the equipment and facilities, so that the dangerous energy can not act on the equipment and facilities dangerous movement mechanism. Zero energy state means that all hazardous energy in equipment and facilities has been cut off and controlled, including residual energy that has been completely eliminated.
The dangerous energy control of equipment and facilities is to cut off the dangerous energy (including eliminating the residual energy) through the dangerous energy opening and closing device, and then execute Lockout tagout, so as to realize the zero energy state of equipment and facilities.
When the equipment and facilities need to carry out long-term downtime maintenance work tasks, the Lockout tagout system is implemented in place, which can effectively eliminate safety risks and ensure the safety of maintenance personnel. However, in factory production, operators may also need to enter the dangerous areas of equipment and facilities for a short time to carry out task work. In this case, the standard Lockout tagout is not applicable because of the tedious procedure and process, which affects the normal production efficiency. In this case, exceptions and alternatives of Lockout tagout should be considered. To protect the operator from mechanical damage. In short, the standard Lockout tagout system is aimed at the primary energy of equipment and facilities, that is, the isolation and locking operation on the power source, while the replacement and exception of Lockout tagout system is often aimed at the secondary energy of equipment and facilities, that is, the isolation and locking operation on the control loop energy. Common such as safety interlocking device.
Summary: For the effective control of dangerous energy of equipment and facilities, Lockout tagout system is to protect the safety of maintenance personnel, and the replacement and exception of Lockout tagout system is to protect the safety of operators.