I need help with grounding.

[Dawna56]

Hi,
I got a flammable safety cabinet recently to store flammable chemicals safely. It needs to be grounded to prevent any electrical surge from causing an explosion. Included here is an image of the cabinet and the refrigerator close to it. You can see a red line starting at the round metal contact and ending where the refrigerator hinge is. I have no idea if the metal hinge might be an effective way to ground the cabinet. I also thought a conductive wire might work to ground the cabinet to a water pipe under the sink.

Can someone reply telling me if either of these might be ok? I also thought the building I live in might have steel rebar reinforcing the concrete, and maybe the concrete would be a solution. I contacted city hall trying to find something about the material used for plumbing here-in other words, whether some pipes are metal or if all of them are PVC. No answer.

Any help would be very much appreciated.

 

[PS Electrics]

Hi,
I got a flammable safety cabinet recently to store flammable chemicals safely. It needs to be grounded to prevent any electrical surge from causing an explosion. Included here is an image of the cabinet and the refrigerator close to it. You can see a red line starting at the round metal contact and ending where the refrigerator hinge is. I have no idea if the metal hinge might be an effective way to ground the cabinet. I also thought a conductive wire might work to ground the cabinet to a water pipe under the sink.

Can someone reply telling me if either of these might be ok? I also thought the building I live in might have steel rebar reinforcing the concrete, and maybe the concrete would be a solution. I contacted city hall trying to find something about the material used for plumbing here-in other words, whether some pipes are metal or if all of them are PVC. No answer.

Any help would be very much appreciated.

I would suggest looking to see if the manufacturer has any info on this.

Here is info on grounding a Justrite safety cabinet for instance

Grounding a Justrite Safety Cabinet | Justrite

Learn the importance of grounding a Justrite safety cabinet. Discover expert insights and guidelines in Justrite's TechTALK to enhance safety practices now.

www.justrite.com

 

[Dawna56]

I would suggest looking to see if the manufacturer has any info on this.

Here is info on grounding a Justrite safety cabinet for instance

Grounding a Justrite Safety Cabinet | Justrite

Learn the importance of grounding a Justrite safety cabinet. Discover expert insights and guidelines in Justrite's TechTALK to enhance safety practices now.

www.justrite.com

Thanks for your reply and the link. Vevor is the manufacturer of my cabinet, and I did email them to ask about this issue. Their answer wasn't easily understood, and I felt uncomfortable with the idea of asking for an explanation.

I learned the cabinet can be grounded with a conductive wire attached to the cabinet and running to a busbar.

I saw images online showing a horizontal busbar located above the vertical rows of switches in a circuit box. I looked in the circuit box in my apartment, and there isn't a busbar inside it. No way ever would I try to install one myself because I have no electrical skills. Where I live I can ask for reasonable accommodation to have an electrician do it. I can't afford to pay an electrician, but hopefully management has one they use, and they'll grant me the accommodation.

 

[newfutile]

Busbars are usually live or hot as you say over there.
I'm not sure what your electrical code says,but over here we would use a ground from a socket or take it back to the DB to the earth bar.

 

[Avo Mk8]

I guess the risk you need to control is avoiding spilt liquid or accumulated vapour, being ignited by a spark from an electrostatic discharge. This might come about if wearing static generating clothing, which with 'insulating' shoes, could result in a static charge building up on you, and the static causing a spark to the cabinet.
In an industrial environment people wear special outer clothing, and/or static control shoes, insoles or straps.
In a home environment you are more likely to wear clothes that could generate static, and my take on this is that connecting the cabinet directly to earth might increase the "spark" intensity/risk rather than reduce it.

A solution I've seen is to ground such cabinets through a high value resistor that will allow a static charge to quickly leak away without creating a spark, dissipating energy that might otherwise trigger combustion.

Traditionally Electrostatic Discharge, ESD, is dealt with by using a 1 Megohm (or higher) resistor between an earth connection (can be the mains earth) and the person, or ESD mat, or cabinet etc.
There are many ESD products on the market to help do this, including a 'mains plug' type adapter that gives you an earth point. Also ESD cables that can include the 1 Megohm resistor (or higher) to connect between the adapter and the work area or cabinet etc.

Below is the most basic US version I've come across, but you'll see other options are available, including the "grounding outlet plug" device.

Amazon.com

You might be able to find a cable terminated in a ring terminal that would fit the stud on your cabinet.