Fire-Rated Cables Standards: Recent Developments for Safety, Facility, and Design Engineers

There have been a number of recent developments regarding standards for fire-rated cables, notably including a new test method for the petrochemical industry. It is vitally important that safety, facility, and design engineers are able to stay educated on these new standards and practices. This article is intended to serve that purpose: it will summarize current standards and will introduce the new IEEE 1717 Standard for Testing Circuit Integrity Cables Using a Hydrocarbon Pool Fire Test Protocol currently under development with the IEEE Insulated Conductor Committee (ICC). The scope of IEEE 1717 is to provide cable and/or system requirements and methods to perform circuit integrity cable testing on energized low-voltage power, control, and instrumentation cables at temperatures and heat fluxes simulating a hydrocarbon pool fire (HPF). The article will explain the reasons for choosing the Underwriters Laboratories (UL) 1709 furnace test with the electrical setup from UL 2196 as the basis for IEEE 1717. It will cover the recent draft of American Petroleum Institute (API) 2218 “Fireproofing Practices in Petroleum and Petrochemical Processing Plants” and related fire tests that are mentioned in UL 1709, American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM) 1529, and UL 2196. In addition, API 14 FZ “Recommended Practice for Design, Installation, and Maintenance of Electrical Systems for Fixed and Floating Offshore Petroleum Facilities for Unclassified and Class I, Zone 0, Zone 1, and Zone 2 Locations” will be reviewed.