Proper maintenance for electrical plants in hazardous areas with potentially explosive atmosphere

Explosion proof electrical equipment designed and manufactured for installation in hazardous areas with potentially explosive atmosphere are usually very safe. The new standards and directives force manufacturers to put on the market only reliable and safe products, which are realised through constantly controlled processes. This is not always in all companies true for those pieces of equipment that have been installed in plants for many years. We found out that many of them are installed incorrectly or that a lot of plants are modified during operation, in a way not to guarantee that the installed pieces of equipment are safe. We will here point out the main mistakes that maintenance people make, which may compromise the whole plant safety. This paper reports about all studied cases, showing the related pictures, to awaken the users´ attention on the importance to correctly use equipment, in order to avoid dangerous accidents.