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"Pervasive Sensing" to reach far beyond the process

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by Jim Montague

Wireless Sensors Will Put the Data in 'Big Data'

Wireless networks will be the highway for a new generation of pervasive sensors and analytical software applications that will give Emerson Process Management's customers the ability to make a far broader range of useful and profitable decisions.

The executive leadership of Emerson Process Management described the company's vision of Pervasive Sensing--and three customers showed how they’re using Pervasive Sensing solutions--during a press conference, “Conquering Complexity: Pervasive Sensing for Actionable Information,” Monday afternoon at the 2013 Emerson Global Users Exchange.

“We want to make sure we’re a listening organization, and show we can work with our customers to solve their toughest problems,” said Steve Sonnenburg, president of Emerson Process Management. “Our customers are traditionally vigilant in optimizing their plant performance and keeping the process safe, but there are other areas into which they haven’t had as much visibility. There’s an increasing emphasis on other business-critical issues, such as equipment reliability, environmental concerns, energy use, security and personnel safety. The cost of monitoring these areas has been dropping due to wireless technology, and we’re now reaching an inflection point that we’re calling Pervasive Sensing.”

Peter Zornio, Emerson’s chief strategy officer, added that everyone seeks actionable information, whether it’s for improving personal health or picking good investments, but these efforts are often incomplete or unsuccessful. However, unlike these other endeavors, Pervasive Sensing’s automated technologies will give its customers far more widespread and complete health visibility.

As a result, the traditional process-critical functions of process control and process safety will now be joined under Pervasive Sensing’s umbrella by business-critical functions of site safety, reliability, energy efficiency and others. “Because keeping applications and facilities up and running was the top priority, it was usually seen as too costly to add more sensors for monitoring business-related issues, but wireless makes doing this simpler and cheaper. Big data is now available,” reported Zornio. “Pervasive Sensing will provide users with real-time information on all aspects of their plants, and so we believe it will more than double today’s $16-billion traditional sensing market.”

In essence, Pervasive Sensing is founded on three pillars:
• Innovative sensors that are multivariable, non-intrusive, and cover wide areas;
• Easily commissioned components that are wireless, self-powered and configuration-free; and
• No-maintenance devices that are accurate, calibration-free and have lifetime reliability.

Next, this foundation delivers its huge amounts of new data to a Strategic Interpretation level, which sorts through it by using sensor awareness functions, new algorithms, industry knowledge and human expertise. Finally, this interpretation level presents its findings to users at the Actionable Information level.

“In fact, the value of business-critical sensing is already being realized,” added Zornio. “We know of a next-generation process plant that’s currently deploying wireless infrastructure, and growing measurements by 60% for business-critical applications, which is above and beyond the 20,000 process-critical process control instruments it already has. These include 2,000 personal safety measurements, 8,000 reliability measurements, and 2,000 energy measurements.”
 
“Pervasive Sensing changes the game in site safety,” added Tom Moser, president of Emerson’s Rosemount measurement and analytical product lines, in introducing three Emerson users already using instrumentation technology to enhance safety, save energy and increase equipment reliability.

For example, Richard Clarke, maintenance team lead for Spectra Energy’s PTC Pipeline division, reported that its Empress plant and pipelines in Saskatchewan produce up to 2.4 billion cubic feet per day of natural gas and resulting liquid products, and then stores much of them in mile-deep salt caverns. Their problem was that shelters protecting surface valves and other devices also collected any gas leaks into dangerous concentrations.

Removing the shelters solved one problem, but introduced others. “Our legacy, single-point, catalytic bead detection technology was effective when the cavern wellhead was contained, but it wasn’t effective without the enclosure to contain leaks because the detector may not sense leaks in fluctuating open-air conditions,” explained Clarke.

As a result, Spectra adopted Emerson’s Incus ultrasonic, wide-area gas monitoring and detection solution, which identifies the background noise produced by any leaks within a 40-meter radius, and is field-proven to overcome any environmental performance challenges.

“We installed Incus last fall, and we’ve had great results,” said Clarke. “It performed flawlessly in all out high-frequency leak tests.”

On the reliability side, Nick Jude, rotating equipment reliability engineer at Flint Hills Resources refinery in Pine Bend, Minn., reported that a recent process hazardous analysis found 100 high-risk pumps that were at risk for vapor cloud releases and potential fires. So, Pine Bend fitted110 pumps with Emerson’s CSI 9420 wireless vibration transmitters for continuous fault detection.

“On one pump, we saw an increase in vibration and confirmed it with a CSI 2130 analyzer,” said Jude. “So, a work order was written, the pump was shut down, and our preventive project objectives were met. We only had enough funds to upgrade 15 pumps with traditional technology, but with wireless we had enough money to do all 110 pumps. And, over eight months, we found three or four pumps like this, and we shut them down, fixed them, and prevented possible catastrophic failures.”

Finally, on the energy efficiency front, Richard Luneack, project coordinator for Fluor’s global services division, reported that a food manufacturer’s plant that makes refrigerated and frozen dough and yogurt in Murfreesboro, Tenn., reduced the energy used by hundreds of its steam traps and saved $36,000 by implementing Emerson’s Rosemount 708 wireless acoustic transmitters, which provide instant alerts about failed traps. 

Parents

  • In my personal opinion, WirelessHART enables existing sites to be modernized & sustained in ways previously not possible, benefitting both operations and maintenance. Wireless changes how we do things, for the better; how we maintain assets, how we look at energy consumption, how personnel operate in the field, and how we manage unmanned sites. One day every plant & field will have 1,000 wireless transmitters. Some sites are already very close.

    EPCs can guide clients to modernize the plants they built years ago as a new business model to tie them through slow periods between projects, through a formal process. New projects should also deploy plant-wide wireless infrastructure, to make sure the new plant is not built to be run & maintained the old way with operator rounds; don’t build a new plant old.

    With additional sensors throughout the plant, software, and operating procedures in place, "desktop maintenance" planning, energy conservation, HS&E compliance, and integrated operations can become a reality. Assets fitted with additional sensors become smart assets able diagnose their conditions and communicate it to operations & maintenance personnel. With these additional sensors in place, operator rounds can be reduced since the data comes to the operator, the operator need not go to the data. In other words, automate not only control loops, but also automate operator rounds and maintenance inspections. The process equipment is inspecting itself; a new type of self-diagnostics. “Pervasive sensing” across the plant is fundamental to this goal.

    Adding sensors using wireless instead of wires enables accelerated deployment making it possible and low risk to deploy this “second layer” of automation during a short turnaround or even while the plant is running. Adding these “missing measurements” is essential for long term reliability of the plant. Therefore more and more plants are installing WirelessHART coverage throughout their process unit areas to enable a second layer of automation. Whereas the primary layer of automation is the regulatory control and safety instrumented functions that enable day to day operations, this second layer enables strategies to improve the reliability of plant assets, minimizing unplanned or unscheduled interruptions to operations and reduce maintenance costs. Modernization is not necessarily system migration, but to add automation where there was none before. Indeed, it is not necessary to replace the control system to add wireless sensors. Most plants add wireless sensors to their existing system and many of the new wireless sensors may connect to separate system for reliability, non-process safety, environmental, energy, and security – separate from the process control and safety system. Another element of this is the non-intrusive mechanical installation possible for many of these measurements; strap-on (ultrasonic sensor), bolt-on (position sensor), clamp-on the surface (temperature sensor), stick-on, screw-on, or magnetic (vibration sensor) eliminate the need for additional process penetrations for these measurements. This dramatically reduces cost and risk of deployment as there is no need to cut, drill, or weld pipes and vessels. Moreover, many of the measurement do not need high accuracy; they just need “good enough”.

    Many operation and maintenance problems around the plant can be solved by deploying WirelessHART transmitters “beyond the P&ID” together with an asset management system and other software to obtain asset health information and other plant data. Wireless enables plants to innovate and experiment with new measurements to solve old operational problems.

    Learn more from these articles:

    Plant modernization

    www.ceasiamag.com/.../9894

    Improved reliability, increased energy efficiency and improved turnaround planning

    issuu.com/.../iaa_aug2010

    Flip through to page 57

    Improved situational awareness; safety

    www.iaasiaonline.com/more.php

    Improved reliability and energy efficiency

    www.ceasiamag.com/.../8689

Comment

  • In my personal opinion, WirelessHART enables existing sites to be modernized & sustained in ways previously not possible, benefitting both operations and maintenance. Wireless changes how we do things, for the better; how we maintain assets, how we look at energy consumption, how personnel operate in the field, and how we manage unmanned sites. One day every plant & field will have 1,000 wireless transmitters. Some sites are already very close.

    EPCs can guide clients to modernize the plants they built years ago as a new business model to tie them through slow periods between projects, through a formal process. New projects should also deploy plant-wide wireless infrastructure, to make sure the new plant is not built to be run & maintained the old way with operator rounds; don’t build a new plant old.

    With additional sensors throughout the plant, software, and operating procedures in place, "desktop maintenance" planning, energy conservation, HS&E compliance, and integrated operations can become a reality. Assets fitted with additional sensors become smart assets able diagnose their conditions and communicate it to operations & maintenance personnel. With these additional sensors in place, operator rounds can be reduced since the data comes to the operator, the operator need not go to the data. In other words, automate not only control loops, but also automate operator rounds and maintenance inspections. The process equipment is inspecting itself; a new type of self-diagnostics. “Pervasive sensing” across the plant is fundamental to this goal.

    Adding sensors using wireless instead of wires enables accelerated deployment making it possible and low risk to deploy this “second layer” of automation during a short turnaround or even while the plant is running. Adding these “missing measurements” is essential for long term reliability of the plant. Therefore more and more plants are installing WirelessHART coverage throughout their process unit areas to enable a second layer of automation. Whereas the primary layer of automation is the regulatory control and safety instrumented functions that enable day to day operations, this second layer enables strategies to improve the reliability of plant assets, minimizing unplanned or unscheduled interruptions to operations and reduce maintenance costs. Modernization is not necessarily system migration, but to add automation where there was none before. Indeed, it is not necessary to replace the control system to add wireless sensors. Most plants add wireless sensors to their existing system and many of the new wireless sensors may connect to separate system for reliability, non-process safety, environmental, energy, and security – separate from the process control and safety system. Another element of this is the non-intrusive mechanical installation possible for many of these measurements; strap-on (ultrasonic sensor), bolt-on (position sensor), clamp-on the surface (temperature sensor), stick-on, screw-on, or magnetic (vibration sensor) eliminate the need for additional process penetrations for these measurements. This dramatically reduces cost and risk of deployment as there is no need to cut, drill, or weld pipes and vessels. Moreover, many of the measurement do not need high accuracy; they just need “good enough”.

    Many operation and maintenance problems around the plant can be solved by deploying WirelessHART transmitters “beyond the P&ID” together with an asset management system and other software to obtain asset health information and other plant data. Wireless enables plants to innovate and experiment with new measurements to solve old operational problems.

    Learn more from these articles:

    Plant modernization

    www.ceasiamag.com/.../9894

    Improved reliability, increased energy efficiency and improved turnaround planning

    issuu.com/.../iaa_aug2010

    Flip through to page 57

    Improved situational awareness; safety

    www.iaasiaonline.com/more.php

    Improved reliability and energy efficiency

    www.ceasiamag.com/.../8689

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