The importance of SIL functional safety certification

Project Overview

For the sake of safety monitoring, more for the long-term and healthy development of the enterprise. Ensuring safe production in the chemical industry is the duty and obligation of every individual. Especially for each petrochemical company, establishing a safety concept and taking precautions against accidents are the first prerequisites for production work. How can the series of disasters and consequences be controlled less or within acceptable limits? For this reason, the SIL certification was born.

In fact, equipment failure occurs in all stages of the product life cycle, only the probability of occurrence is different.SIL certification is to intervene at the beginning of the product design, in accordance with certain standards and mature norms of the product throughout the life cycle of the controllability of management, so that the possibility of failure is reduced to a lower level. The positive impact of SIL certification on flowmeter products:

• 1、You can be assured of the correctness of the product-specific functionality.
• 2、It can increase the acceptance and recognition of the product in the industry.
• 3、Increased competitiveness of products due to higher safety of certified products.
• 4、Customers usually think: certified = recognised = quality.

The positive impact of SIL certification on business:

• 1、Improvement of corporate safety experience and safety levels.
• 2、Significant competitive advantage over non-certified peers.
• 3、Corporate R&D processes are more standardised and verifiable.
• 4、There is a higher level of safety in the system when injuries occur.
• 5、Throughout the certification process, it is ensured that the company's R&D level is maintained at a high level.

If a project, a system or a product is certified by SIL, the quality and safety of its products will be recognised and acknowledged, which will enhance the market competitiveness of the enterprise as well as greatly increase the confidence of the customers in the products. Therefore, if a product has a greater impact on the safety of life and property, SIL certification is very necessary. So, what is SIL certification?

SIL(SafetyIntegrityLevel) is a third party assessment, verification and certification of the safety integrity level (SIL) or performance level (PL) of safety equipment based on standards such as IEC61508(GB/T20438),IEC61511(GB/T21109),IEC61513,IEC13849-1,IEC62061,IEC61800-5-2 and so on. IEC61800-5-2, IEC61513, IEC138491, IEC62061, IEC61800-5-2, etc. It is a third-party assessment, verification and certification to assess and confirm the safety integrity level (SIL) or performance level (PL) of the safety equipment. Functional safety certification mainly involves document management (FSM) assessment for the development process of safety equipment, hardware reliability calculation and assessment, software assessment, environmental testing, EMC electromagnetic compatibility testing and other content.

The level at which the SIL of a safety-related system should be achieved is derived from a risk analysis, i.e. by analysing a combination of four factors: the severity of the consequences of the risk, the duration and frequency of the exposure to the risk, the probability of not being able to avoid the risk, and the probability of the occurrence of an undesired event. The higher the level requires the lower the probability of its hazardous failure. In recent years, chemical safety accidents occur frequently, people "talk about chemical". In the chemical production operation, the safety requirements of the equipment should be attached great importance.

Supmea has obtained SIL certificates for a number of products, reflecting that the quality of the company's products has been in line with international safety standards, marking that the company's products have reached the petrochemical process production process of instrumentation products with high safety requirements! Examples of SIL functional safety certificates.