Tüpraş - Hearing through
the noise
How Turkey's largest refineries are deploying bone conduction technology to help site personnel communicate
Tüpraş are the largest refinery company in Turkey and the 7th largest in Europe operating four major refineries across the country. As part of a massive innovation drive Tüpraş are engaging with innovation partners to help solve a number of challenges across their business and site operations. In fact over the last 17 months they have undertaken a massive 17 POCs of which the Mobilus Platform was one!
The refinery sites are huge industrial complex with a mixture of risks and hazards, areas of high noise and areas where electronic devices must be intrinsically safe.
Challenge
Tüpraş was investigating ways that they could improve their site communication for field workers, and particularly in areas where hearing protection is required. The plants include areas where background noise in some areas, such as power generation, can easily reach levels of 80db+ up to 120+db.
It was identified that difficulty in communication had real implications for operators on site both in terms of productivity but also potentially an increased risk of safety. In the highest noise environments there was a risk that these could become communication black spots where no one is able to hear traditional walkie talkie communication. An additional challenge they faced was with the team conducting inspections and potential gas leakages where special full face respiratory masks are worn. Under these conditions, users have no effective means of communication beyond yelling through their mask into a walkie talkie pressed against the outside of the mask. Likewise, in high noise environments, when wearing appropriate hearing protection they’re unable to hear incoming voice messages played over the speaker of the walkie talkie.
Solution
Following the initial analysis of the problem, and engaging on possible solutions, it was determined that Mobilus’ mobiWAN bi-directional bone conduction headset could assist with communication across the site with no additional infrastructure required.
Mobilus and Tüpras deployed the mobiWAN solution to site at the Izmit Refinery in Turkey. The mobiWAN was paired to the operatives standard Motorola(R) walkie talkie radios using their bluetooth connection. This meant the teams could continue utilising the existing radio channels and infrastructure on site combined with the mobiWAN headset.. The mobiWAN was deployed and tested in environments with over 100 dB of environmental noise emitted from nearby steam turbine engines. This deployment has demonstrated that the ear-free and hands free approach of the bone conduction technology successfully enabled users to clearly receive incoming voice audio from their radios while wearing necessary hearing protection.
The use case of testing the mobiWAN while wearing full-face masks and ear defenders was also demonstrated on site with Tüpras. In this application of the technology, users are able to benefit from Mobilus’ bone conduction microphone technology which captures the user’s voice from the micro-vibrations emitted through their jaw and skull while speaking. In doing so, the voice signal is captured outside of the full-face mask while simultaneously attenuating any of the high environmental noise that would typically be captured by an air coupled microphone.
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