Hello all,

I have attempted to do research on this but I haven't found much. What are the risks of drone usage in an industrial setting involving proximity to flammable gases? I've never seen a spark thrown with the motors or batteries on our M600, but is there a rating on them to deem them sparkless? Can anyone point me in a good direction?

Thanks!

Russell

I think you ought to steer clear. I don't think your insurance company would pay up in the event of an incident? Perhaps invest in a Z30 if it's commercially viable?

There are brushless motors and sparkless

Although rare, depending on your model when a ESC fails or motherboard chip failure there is a chance of spark or an ignition source. I would steer clear of flammable gasses.  

Hi,
I think there is another small problem you might have to research and that is static, any rapidly moving conductive part such as Carbon will build up a charge and so as you might of seen with a vandergraph generator can be at a high voltage with the ability to jump to an object of lower potential.  The battery chemistry is quite volatile even in an inert environment so lots of explosion proof housings would be needed.
The place to start is the facility safety rules and specs, that will let you know how they rate ignition potentials, could be the parts per million of inflatable material is so low due to very precise monitoring  they will allow brushless motors. They use drones on oil rigs so their must be some exceptions.

ricci

Hi,
What you're asking is .."Is the M100 Intrinsically Safe". This is a term used in the resources sector - and by others, to label equipment that is safe around flammable material including gases. On an oil platform for example, even the hand-held radios need to be certified "intrinsically safe" - this meaning, there is no chance of a naked spark from the equipment. Think Deep Water Horizon as what the consequences could be.

There are so many sparking items on a multicopter that I think it will be many years before one will be certified intrinsically safe.

Hope this helps
NB

There is a company in Scotland that do rig inspections, they might have some clues in the T & C on the website, however I agree with Uaviation, its a long time coming when the first drone has certificated paperwork to be "intrinsically safe". Thats not to say with a proper risk assessment and insurance some companies could agree to let you fly.

Would love to  know if you do get permissions.

Ricci

Ricci,

I wanted to give you an update. We actually did end up scanning a chemical plant in Louisiana. It took about 2 weeks to fly the entire plant; photogrammetry and LIDAR for over 800 acres. We used the Drone Deploy app for automated control and it all worked very well. We stayed clear of flare stacks and gas stacks and we had no problem...except weather haha. Lots of rain down here for the past 2 months.