According to Dermot Coady and Joe Mayr, this is a major announcement by MTL:
MTL First to Provide Full Redundancy for FISCOMTL Instruments, a part of Cooper Crouse-Hinds, is pleased to announce a major enhancement to its class-leading range of Fieldbus Intrinsically Safe Concept (FISCO) wiring components for FOUNDATIONTM Fieldbus networks with the introduction of redundancy. MTL are the first company to introduce redundancy for the FISCO concept, which will provide the highest level of reliability for critical hazardous area applications.Specifically, redundancy of the fieldbus power supplies will eliminate the risk of network failure in the event of loss of a single supply unit. Such redundancy has increasingly been requested by end users and engineering companies for fieldbus installations in which failure could result in severe loss of production. The new enhancements will allow FISCO to be deployed across a wider range of fieldbus applications in process industries, and in particular those where the ‘live-maintenance’ benefits of intrinsic safety are requiredFISCO is defined by IEC standard 60079-27, which provides a framework for the design and implementation of intrinsically safe fieldbus networks in hazardous areas. It has found wide industry acceptance because of the benefits of intrinsic safety as the safest explosion protection technique, the clearly defined maintenance practice and the widespread recognition by national standards organisations.Since their introduction in 2002, the MTL simplex FISCO power supplies and wiring components have become the definitive solution for intrinsically safe fieldbus, and have been chosen by influential end users to protect major hazardous area networks worldwide. Plant operators have been able to take advantage of the benefits of a fully live-workable field network without the onerous restrictions on segment loading and maximum cable length that were imposed by earlier IS techniques.
The existing product portfolio has established MTL’s credentials as technical leader for intrinsically safe fieldbus. These will be further enhanced by the introduction of FISCO redundancy.
