Hazardous Area Cranes – Key Considerations

Cranes are used in a wide variety of industrial environments. It is hard to imagine of an industry that does not use cranes for industrial lifting purposes. You will find different types of EOT cranes in the industrial setup. Even though the purpose of the crane is almost the same, to lift and move heavy weight objects from one location to the other within the factory premises for indoor material shifting needs or for from one location to the other in the outdoor environment, the nature of the environment in which the cranes are operated varies.

Some of these environments can be categorized under hazardous areas as in the case of oil and gas industry or construction industry. Your crane is exposed to extreme environments and they need to withstand such diverse environments while at the same time ensuring the top-notch performance. If your cranes are used in hazardous environments then it is important that you take into account the following factors.

Regardless of whether you are using single girder overhead crane, double girder overhead crane or other types of cranes, you need to make sure that the body of the crane is built using corrosion resistant material. For example, lifting equipment used in the seaports are more vulnerable to corrosion because they are constantly exposed to salty air, which speeds up rusting and corrosion process. As you could easily imagine, corrosion in industrial lifting equipment could prove to be very dangerous because it undermines the strength of the equipment. Cranes exposed to corrosion have higher risk of failure and damages to property and people.

The next important consideration is to do with the use of cranes in flammable environments. Oil and gas industry is a typical example for the use of cranes in flammable environments. In order to minimize the risk of fire accidents the cranes should be spark free.

When different types of materials interact in the industrial lifting environment, sparks can be produced which could pose a huge danger. This is a difficult area to deal with because one needs to continually monitor the processes to ensure there is no friction between the combination of material that could produce sparks. The entire operation should be very carefully monitored to ensure there are no accidental sparks that could lead to fire accidents.

There are industrial lifting environments where the material lifted is of unpredictable weight at times. All the lifting equipment have their own maximum capacity that they could handle comfortably without snapping. It is possible to prevent crane failures only when there is adequate information about the total weight to be lifted. In case of lack of information about the total estimated weight to be handled, the equipment and the people around it are put to great risk. In such instances, it is important to use the highest capacity crane possible. There are many such hazardous environments where your crane is exposed to risks. You need to ensure that you are carefully addressing these challenges.