Contact-less lighting system has no contact sparking when lamps are hot plugged?

[treez]

Is this kind of "contact-less" lighting mainly good for use in explosive environments?, where eg fine powders or fumes in the atmosphere could cause an explosion if a "Normal" luminaire was "hot plugged" in to a "Normal" lighting system.

The isotera system has no metal to metal contacts so presumably if they "hot plug" a luminaire in then there will be no contact sparks?

**broken link removed**


The transfer of energy is by magnetic field, so presumably there are no sparks, even when the ferrite core halves are manually closed together?

So, is the main advantage of the isotera system its possible application in explosive environments?.....since there is no contact sparking when luminaires are hot plugged?

 

[tpetar]

For explosive environments bigger danger is from floor surface. Floor should have special anti static protection (ESD Flooring...).

Ammunition factories (very very danger environment) uses hermeticaly lights systems.

For this what you post I'm not sure, maybe its ok, maybe not. In this kind environments there is no PIR sensors and other such electrical devices, there is no wall switches or anything else, lights are controlled from one dedicated and safe place, all wires are protected in walls and light bulbs, leds,... are hermeticaly closed in specially designed cases for this purposes.

Static electricity is bigger danger then this. Also surf about explosions in big silos for grains. :wink:

 

[godfreyl]

no contact sparking

I can think of a couple of other safety advantages:
Firstly, there's no exposed or open electrical connections, so loose bits of metal or wire can't make contact to cause a short or shock hazard. Similarly they can be made waterproof, so dropping an open connector in a puddle of water or spilling coffee on it isn't a disaster.

 

[FvM]

Obviously the said "contactless" power distributing system hasn't been designed to provide intrinsic safety and I doubt, that it could be easily (or even ever) approved for it. There are other requirements than just absence of sparks, also the maximum power respectively energy delivered to an arbitrary load must be safely limited. You most likely have seen prohibitive signs banning mobile phone usage while refuelling your car. It's assumed that a GSM phone's 2 W RF power might act as an ignition source under adverse conditions. I don't want to discuss the reasonability of this special regulations, just explain why the said system would be probably never accepted for usage in hazardous areas.

 

[steveelliott]

Obviously the said "contactless" power distributing system hasn't been designed to provide intrinsic safety and I doubt, that it could be easily (or even ever) approved for it. There are other requirements than just absence of sparks, also the maximum power respectively energy delivered to an arbitrary load must be safely limited. You most likely have seen prohibitive signs banning mobile phone usage while refuelling your car. It's assumed that a GSM phone's 2 W RF power might act as an ignition source under adverse conditions. I don't want to discuss the reasonability of this special regulations, just explain why the said system would be probably never accepted for usage in hazardous areas.

I believe the reason that you should turn off your phone during refueling is because the vibrate motor can spark and ignite vapors.

 

[FvM]

The rule is older than mobile phones with vibration alarm, I think.

The actual problem is this. You might think think that it's very unlikely to ignite gasoline vapour with a nearby mobile phone. The problem is however, that you have difficulties to prove that it can't happen. Field strength of a mobile phone are rather high (> 100 V/m), you can imagine a resonator formed by some arbitraly positioned metal parts that generate a spark of sufficient energy. A similar problem arises if you want to get the said contactless lighting system recognized as intrinsic safe.