Feb
25
One of the most obvious reasons for poor control utilization is a broken or unreliable transmitter or sensor. As addressed in Chapter 3 of Advanced Control Foundation – Tools, Techniques, and Applications, if the control system is designed to be consistent with the international function block standard, IEC 61804, the status attribute is always communicated …
Jan
14
The operation of industrial process control systems often involves the control of multiple unit operations with hundreds of measurements and control loops, as illustrated below. Although these systems are designed to automatically archive operational data in an historian, it is time consuming to examine historical data to determine if there has been a change in …
Dec
10
The single loop and multi-loop control techniques most often used in automating continuous and batch processes are addressed in the book Control Loop Foundation – Batch and Continuous Processes. Similarly, the advanced control techniques that are most often utilized in the process industry are addressed in the book Advanced Control Foundation – Tools, Techniques, and …
Sep
24
One of the areas addressed by the DeltaV future architecture team over the last two years has been the research and development of on-line continuous data analytics for fault detection quality parameter prediction. This year a prototype of this capability is being tested at two plants in Texas and one plant in Canada. Lubrizol, Deer …
Sep
17
I worked closely with Emerson’s education department to establish the class Control Loop Foundation (9025). This 4 ½ day class is intended primarily for people who are new to the process industry and process control. Approximately 30% of the class is dedicated to workshops in which the students get hands on experience working with the …
Aug
20
IEC accepted the U.S. National Committee’s offer to hold IEC/TC 65, SC 65A, SC 65B, SC 65C and SC 65E meetings during the weeks of 17-21 and 24-28 September 2012 at the Orange County Convention Center, Orlando Florida, USA. Subcommittee meetings are schedules the week before the start of ISA Automation Week. The plenary will …
Jul
30
Courses required for an engineering degree are designed to provide the student with a sound technical foundation for work in industry. However, in most cases these courses do not address the terminology and common practices that an engineer must know to design, implement, checkout and commission a process control system. Universities can help bridge this …
Jun
04
It was my pleasure to co-teach with Darrell Dray the Control Loop Foundation class (9025) the week of May 21st, 2012. The class was held in Emerson Process Management’s Education Center located in Round Rock, TX – just outside of Austin, TX. This 4 ½ day class is based on the Control Loop Foundation book. …
Feb
27
Earlier this year, the Namur Working Group 4.15 invited Emerson and four other major manufactures of distributed control systems and wireless transmitters to present their activities and R&D work concerning closed loop real time control applications based on wireless technology. In this meeting with Working Group 4.15, each vendor was given one hour for their …
Feb
13
In January I posted a series of four (4) blogs that addressed the implement of an on-line compressor efficiency calculation. The example for this series was a compressor for a refrigeration system that used R134a refrigerant. If you have a similar compressor application in your plant then the information provided in these blogs may act …
