exida, the global leader in functional safety certification for the process industries, has certified the Riken Keiki SD-1RI Infrared Gas Detector for functional safety, ensuring that it meets the functional safety requirements for Safety Integrity Level (SIL) 3 capability per IEC 61508: 2010.

“We are pleased that Riken Keiki has chosen exida as its Certification Body (CB),” says Karou Sonoda, principal engineer, exida-Japan LLC.

“exida’s extensive Gas Detector certification experience gives us the technical depth to really understand the product.”

“exida has done more fire and gas sensors than any other certification body,” says Riken Keiki. “Its extensive technical experience, Japanese language support and project management were very beneficial and made the entire project go very smoothly.”

Hal Thomas, exida Partner has been awarded the ISA Standards and Practices Award for his outstanding leadership and technical expertise as ISA84 Working Group 9 chairman in the development of ISA-TR84.00.09-2013, Security Countermeasures Related to SIS.

Mr. Thomas has over 36 years of professional experience. He is widely recognized as an expert in functional process safety analysis, including safety instrumented systems and high availability automation systems. He helped pioneer the use of HAZOP, fault tree analysis, consequence analysis, LOPA, and introduction of the SIS work process while at Air Products. He was formerly an Engineering Associate – Process Safety and Technology Manager for Safety Instrumented Systems at Air Products and Chemicals, Inc. His principle work responsibilities included assisting and mentoring process safety and process control engineers in hazard identification, the use of fault tree analysis, LOPA, SIL assessment, SIL verification, leading new technology hazard reviews, as well as to write standards and procedures to promote high quality and consistent results.

He helped institute a managed system of standardized consequence analysis procedures and managed the development of a number of in house tools and models to support both likelihood and consequence analysis. He has served on a number of CCPS committees that have written guideline books, and is an original member of the CCPS Process Equipment Reliability Database initiative. He is a member of the CFSE Governing Board and is a senior member of ISA. He has authored numerous published papers.

ABB has announced that its operations in Canada have been certified by TÜV SÜD as having in place and applying a Functional Safety Management System (FSMS) for the design and engineering of safety instrumented system (SIS) projects in accordance with industry good practice safety standards. These standards include IEC 61508 and IEC 61511 for the integration and implementation of safety instrumented systems.

TÜV SÜD is one of the world’s leading accredited specialists in the assessment and certification of organizations and products to international safety standards, with the mission to protect people, the environment and property against technology-related risks.

The TÜV FSMS certification, the first awarded to a center based in Canada, recognizes that ABB’s functional safety management system complies with international safety standards and good practices for its SIL 3 capable products, engineering and project teams, and delivery processes. It meets all relevant sections of the IEC 61508 and IEC 61511 safety standards for integration and implementation of SIS, including system configuration, application programming, testing, verification, validation and management for process industries safety applications.

“This certification underscores ABB’s dedication to excellence in providing our customers with safety solutions, products and services that they need to implement to protect their most critical assets: their people, the environment, the surrounding community, and the process,” said Marcus Toffolo, Vice President Chemical, Oil & Gas from ABB’s Safety Execution Center in Canada. “The need for local reliable engineering resources and quality safety automation solutions has grown exponentially over the past few years. The depth and scope of our regulatory, technical and project execution knowledge here in Canada, as well as in other parts of the world, provides our customers with the trusted expertise they need to meet or exceed industry requirements and achieve their process safety goals.”

Exida, one of the leading certification bodies for functional safety and security standards, assessed RPC Radiy’s RadICS FPGA-Based Safety Controller (FSC) per the relevant requirements of IEC 61508:2010, parts 1-7 and found that it meets requirements providing Safety Integrity Level (SIL) 3.

Radiy’s RadICS FSC will read input signals, perform user-defined application layer logic and write results to the output signals within the stated response time. The FSC can be used for design and development of SIL 3 level applications.

“Radiy has developed unique technology that utilizes FPGAs to implement logic solver capabilities,” said Dave Butler, exida evaluating assessor. “Their strong development process ensures the delivery of products that achieve high levels of functional safety.”

The following is from the exida assessment report:

“The audited development process as tailored and implemented for the RPC Radiy FPGA-based Safety Controller (FSC) RadICS development project, complies with the relevant safety management requirements of IEC 61508 SIL 3.

“The assessment of the FMEDA, done to the requirements of IEC 61508, has shown that the FPGA-based Safety Controller (FSC) RadICS can be used in a Low Demand safety related system in a manner where the calculated PFD AVG is within the allowed range for SIL 3 (HFT >= 0) according to table 2 of IEC 61508-1.

The RadICS platform (see Fig. 1) is a set of general-purpose building blocks that can be configured and used to implement application-specific functions and systems. The RadICS platform is composed of various standardized modules, each based on the use of FPGA chips as computational engines.

The basic configuration for the RadICS platform consists of an instrument rack containing two logic modules, as well as up to 14 other I/O modules and fibre-optic communication modules. Logic modules gather input data from input modules, execute user-specified logic, and update the value driving the output modules, as well as gather diagnostic and general health information from all I/O modules. The I/O modules provide interfaces with field devices (for example, sensors, transmitters, actuators). The functionality of each module is driven by the logic implemented in the on-board FPGA(s).

The basic set of I/O modules consists of analogue and digital input, and digital output modules. There are also special-purpose I/O boards designed for specific field detectors and devices, such as resistance temperature detectors (RTDs), thermocouples, ultra-low voltage AI boards used for neutronic instrumentation, actuator controller modules, and fibre-optic communication modules that can be used to expand the I&C system to multiple chassis. It is also possible to provide inter-channel communications between 2, 3 or 4 channels via fibre-optic communications directly between logic modules.

The backplane of the RadICS platform provides external interfaces to power supply, process I/Os, communication links, and local inputs and indicators. The internal backplane interfaces provide connections to the various modules that are installed within the chassis by means of a dedicated, isolated, point-to-point low-voltage differential signalling (LVDS) interface.