intrinsically safe safety 12v

When you say "hazardous area", I assume you mean one that may have an explosive atmosphere, is that right? And in an industrial setting?

Could you tell us a bit more about the exact requirement?

Cheers,

Phil Hobbs

Can't you use a pneumatic actuator? Or a mechanical link?

An I.S. DC-DC barrier would be preferable to the somewhat dated Zener blocks. The input supply voltage feeds 1:1 to the load but is galvanically isolated and I.S. approved

Pepperl+Fuchs do a whole range of I.S. isolators. Google instantly turned up ...

So hang a small dc-dc converter across the battery to get enough voltage to drive through a conventional barrier?

Hi: Thanks for the reply. In the safe area we have a 12V battery bank and charger. There is a custom barrier box for a computer that reside in the hazardous area. There are pneumatic operators here also . In an effort to save time and money (hard conduit, etc.), we're using an intrinsically safe solenoid set. These solenoids need 10V @ 30mA to switch. The computer provides an open-drain FET for switching. This may be 12V only, being clamped to the + rail. What we've done is use another custom barrier for the solenoid, but I think these are expensive to. Overall, it's still cheaper than re-tubing.