2026 IECEx Annual Meeting | Growing Together Over Two Decades, Exploring Practical Implementation of Ethernet-APL

Lead-in: Recently, the 2026 IECEx Annual Meeting was held in Beijing, China. Shanghai Chenzhu Instrument Co., Ltd. was invited to attend the event. Zhou Ting, Vice-Chairperson and Professor-Level Senior Engineer of Chenzhu, delivered a keynote speech titled Ethernet-APL in Practice: From Standard Interpretation to Design Implementation.

IECEx 30th Anniversary, 20 Years of China’s Participation

The 2026 IECEx Annual Meeting convened in Beijing. This year marks the 30th anniversary of the IECEx System, as well as the 20th anniversary of China’s participation in IECEx. It is also the second time the IECEx Annual Meeting has been hosted in China, following the 2006 edition held in Shanghai — a 20-year milestone for the event’s return to Chinese soil.

Chenzhu: A Witness and Practitioner

Guided by its core principle of “One Standard, One Certificate, One Mark”, the IECEx System establishes a globally-recognized mutual-recognition framework for electrical equipment deployed in explosive hazardous atmospheres.

Since China joined IECEx in 2005, domestic explosion-protection manufacturers have evolved from learning and achieving compliance certification toward technological innovation and participation in international rule-setting. Chenzhu has been an on-the-ground witness and active contributor throughout this journey.

From Pilot Participant to Holder of China’s First Certificate

Chenzhu’s intrinsic safety R&D traces back to China’s National Ninth Five-Year Plan R&D initiative launched in 1997. Starting in 2004, Chenzhu collaborated with China Quality Mark Certification Group (CQM) as a pilot enterprise, supporting domestic IECEx certification bodies to build assessment procedures for intrinsically safe associated equipment from scratch.

In 2005, the GS8047-EX isolated safety barrier passed the initial CQM explosion-proof product assessment. It obtained PTB (Germany) ATEX certification in 2007. In 2011, the GS8500-EX series isolated safety barriers were granted China’s first IECEx certificate for safety barriers. To date, Chenzhu holds 13 IECEx certificates covering 55 product models.

Putting Ethernet-APL into Practice: From Standards to Real-World Design

Zhou Ting, Vice-Chairperson and Professor-Level Senior Engineer of Chenzhu, presented the keynote Ethernet-APL in Practice: From Standard Interpretation to Design Implementation. She noted that Ethernet-APL extends Industrial Ethernet down to field locations within hazardous areas, imposing stringent multi-layer requirements combining high-speed data communication, intrinsic safety, and surge protection.

Drawing on nearly 30-year-long accumulation in intrinsic-safety technology, Chenzhu has developed a full-port galvanic isolation design. This architecture delivers independent energy domains for each APL port and prevents fault propagation across individual ports, enabling stable and reliable communication within explosive hazardous zones. The design has been implemented in Chenzhu's APL field switch, which has obtained IECEx certification.

Building a Solid Safety Foundation via International Standards

Chenzhu embeds full-chain IECEx quality requirements across R&D, supply-chain management, manufacturing and product verification workflows. Leveraging international standards to boost product reliability, Chenzhu delivers solutions for large-scale process-industry projects including petrochemical, coal-to-chemical, and oil & gas tank-farm applications.

As a member unit of SAC/TC9/SC7 (Sub-committee 7, National Technical Committee 9 on Explosion-proof Electrical Equipment of China), Chenzhu actively engages in industry ecosystem development. The company closely follows the evolution of IEC 60079-47 (2-WISE / Ethernet-APL) international standards, and commits to feeding Chinese engineering insights and practical experience back into global standard-setting iterations.

Toward the Next Two Decades

Evolving from a learner and early adopter to a trailblazer and innovative practitioner for digital explosion-protection solutions, Chenzhu has grown hand-in-hand with China’s IECEx community over the past two decades. Moving forward, Chenzhu will continue deep-dive into intrinsic-safety technologies, keep pace with updates to international standards, and work alongside global industry peers to safeguard industrial safety worldwide and advance high-quality development of China’s explosion-protection sector.