We were recently asked about placing Hydrogen Sulfide (H2S) gas detectors in an area of the process where no H2S gas is normally present. Does the possibility for process upset conditions to abnormally result in the presence of toxic gas give rise to a requirement for detection? There was no way to simply answer the [...]
Most process plant engineering includes the development of 3D models that define the facility and help engineers to visualize the plant while it is still on the "drawing board", allowing for optimization of design. These models are also a key part of determining the number of fire detectors that are required and where they should [...]
Companies that are participating in oil and gas production on the Norwegian Continental Shelf know that they are required to meet the NORSOK standards. There is a NORSOK standard that is cutting edge (in comparison to other legislative body guidance in the field of instrumented safeguards), and that standard is NORSOK S-001 Technical Safety. Section [...]
More and more fire and gas professionals are asking about the benefit of using scenario coverage over geographic coverage. They see that the amount of effort required to perform a scenario coverage mapping project is significantly increased so they desire to see evidence that the additional effort is worth it. Well, it is worth the [...]
When performing fire and gas mapping utilizing geographic coverage techniques, one needs to define the extents of the area of concern. This process allows the analyst to define the actual area that must be covered by the fire detectors or the gas detectors. This is only important for geographic coverage methods because geographic methods do [...]
The performance of optical fire detectors is generally defined by the test results that equipment vendors perform utilizing the FM 3260 test specification. FM 3260 testing provides a set of results, that when graphically presented is often referred to as the "cone of vision" of the detector. A typical cone of vision drawing for an [...]
In the past few years, the use of quantitative risk analysis tools to determine the required number of location of gas detectors has gotten more attention in the literature and also in real world project execution. While there is great interest in these performance based methods, often referred to as fire and gas mapping, there [...]
There have been times when customers have asked whether or not our Effigy fire and gas mapping software is capable of modeling in 2D instead of 3D. The rationale for the request is that the customer does not have 3D models for their facility, but would still like to have an analysis performed. All of the [...]
The China University of Petroleum and Kenexis has signed licensing agreements that will allow the university to utilize Kenexis software and Kenexis training materials in the gradudate and undergraduate curricula for the Department of Safety Science and Engineering of the College of Mechanical Engineering. In keeping with Kenexis' policy of giving back to the engineering [...]
We have developed the Effigy (Fire & Gas Detector Mapping) and Vertigo (SIS Lifecycle Management) software tools in Kenexis Instrumented Safeguard Suite to support language switching through your browser. While we still have work to do to translate the help files, the application is already translated into Chinese and Portuguese. This is done through the [...]
FGS Mapping, specifically using the Kenexis Effigy FGS Mapping software application is the topic of a new video released by Kenexis. The video, which runs about four and a half minutes, provides a great overview of the process of fire and gas mapping in general and also provides an detailed explanation of how the Kenexis [...]
With the relatively new and growing interest in design of Fire & Gas systems using computer-aided mapping for detector placement, these software tools are rapidly evolving. Full disclosure here; Kenexis develops and licenses a very good software tool called Effigy™ for Fire & Gas Mapping, which is a component of the Kenexis Integrated Safeguard Suite. [...]
Kenexis is happy to announce the release of Effigy™ Version 4.1.0. The release of this version introduces the plume fire algorithm for fire geographic mapping. This blog describes the details of the plume fire model, how it differs from the point source model used by most fire and gas mapping software, and when the use [...]
Kenexis is happy to announce the release of EffigyTM version 4.0.5. The release of this version of the software contains a number of upgrades and enhancements that are certain to improve your experience as an Effigy user. Most notably, this release includes the ability for a user to directly import 3D CAD models through the [...]
Many fire and gas mapping practitioners are performing fire and gas mapping studies without first performing a hazard assessment to select the required coverage targets for the system. This typically involves setting a “standard” target for coverage which is applied across all areas of the process plant. While this is acceptable and will typically result [...]
