Good day everyone and welcome back to The Word This Week. I am Leonard Hale with GC Energy Services, a division of Gulf Copper and Manufacturing. GC Energy Services provides maintenance, repairs, and upgrades to marine assets in the USA and Mexico.
Our word for this week is Tribocharging. This is not a common word we would have in our daily vocabulary, and at fist glance, it is not an easy word to guess the meaning of if you are not familiar with it’s origin. The meaning of “Tribo”, which has a Greek origin, is “to rub” or “friction”. Add this to “charging” and your get “friction charging”, or a more formal definition is the building of an electrostatic charge by the contact or rubbing of two different materials or substances together. We are all familiar with this concept from walking across carpet and then touching a metal door knob. Or when reaching for our car’s door knob when it is dry outside and we have a static charge built up in our body.
The “zap” we feel when the static charge in our body releases, is actually a spark and it is jumping from us to the other item. This happens because there is a great enough electrical potential to allow the charge to dissipate by jumping across the air gap before actual physical contact. While this zap is unsettling, it is usually harmless. However when there is an atmosphere that is potentially explosive, a static charge, jumping across a gap can be an ignition source with devastating results.
Two differing substances in contact with each other will often generate an electric charge. Whenever two insulators have opposite charge tendencies, one tending to create negative charge, and one tending to create positive charge, and they are rubbed together, a sizable charge can be created. It is important to understand that there are many liquids that can build up and retain electrostatic charges, otherwise known as static accumulators. This occurs as they pass through piping systems, pass through filters are agitated or mixed. In the drilling industry, the tanker industry (oil, chemical or gas), storage terminals, refineries and many industrial sites, these types of fluid transfer operations are commonly performed with flammable liquids. Understanding when these types of liquids may be tribocharging is critical for safe operation of these facilities or assets. Activity types that may allow tribocharging should be engineered out of the operations, or have appropriate safeguards that prevent the build up of electrostatic energy. A potential for spark to occur when there is an explosive atmosphere is a potential for disaster, and this is the reason it is important for operators of these assets to understand when and how tribocharging may be occurring. And how to prevent the charge from accumulating in an area where explosive gases may accumulate.
The International Safety Guide for Tankers and Terminals, by the International Chamber of Shipping (ICS), Oil Company International Marine Forum (OCIMF), and the International Association of Ports and Harbors (IAPH), devotes an entire chapter to Static Electricity, how it is formed and how it can be safely managed. I highly recommend this book if you are in the shipping, terminal or drilling industry and wish to become further educted on safe handling of oil and chemicals, and their associated flammable atmospheres.
A few web sites with more information about the dangers of tribocharging or static accumulation in the tanker industry are: http://marinenotes.blogspot.com/2012/08/static-electricity-relating-to-oil.html ; https://www.isgintt.org/files/documents/Chapter_03en_isgintt_062010.pdf ;
We now have another interesting word to add to our vocabulary, Tribocharging.
The word we will learn about next week on The Word This Week will be deadleg. Do you know this word? send me a note of what you think it is on LinkedIn, Facebook, or Twitter. Until next week, be safe in all that you do.
Leonard Hale
