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Offshore Total Support
08-06-2007
Offshore Europe, Aberdeen, 4 – 7 September - Stand 1413D
Hughes Safety Showers will be exhibiting at Offshore Europe, as part of the Energy Industries Council’s Group stand.
The comprehensive service provided by Hughes Safety Showers for the oil and gas industry includes specially developed emergency safety showers and eyebath/facewash units with technical back up from approved and certified engineers.
This life-saving equipment provides essential first aid in the event of a chemical spill. Conventional emergency showers are unsuitable for the harsh and corrosive environment encountered off-shore. Stainless steel pipe work and fittings are essential, and depending on the precise location, a flameproof design is often required.
Hughes units designed for off-shore use have a choice of optional fittings and features so that they can be tailored to suit specific applications. The most popular model comprises an emergency shower with integral eyebath/facewash and a separate hand held body spray. The whole unit is heated to provide frost protection in exposed locations.
This type of shower, of course, has to be permanently connected to the mains water supply. Where a mains supply is unavailable or unreliable, self-contained tank showers offer an alternative solution. They are filled using a hosepipe. The three heated tank showers in the Hughes range have capacities from 350 – 1200 litres and the final choice is often determined by the available headroom and floor space. The 1200 litre model is the ideal choice as it stores sufficient water to deliver a 15 minute shower without being connected to the mains supply. This is the minimum required by the internationally accepted American ANSI standard.
The smaller capacity tank showers provide valuable first aid but to meet the ANSI standard they must be connected to a mains water supply.
One of the main advantages of using a tank shower is that the water can be heated so that casualties are not subjected to a cold deluge and the risk of shock. This is different to the outdoor showers referred to earlier which are only heated to prevent the water freezing in the pipe and not to deliver warm water at the shower head.
Tank showers can also be fitted with cubicles to offer additional protection from the elements during and after showering. Hughes has developed a totally enclosed cubicle shower tank for cold climates and this is now used in the North American oil fields
Servicing is obviously a key consideration and Hughes has engineers specifically trained to work off-shore all of whom are approved and certified.
In such a critical working environment, maintaining safety equipment is vitally important.