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Event Highlights & Feature Sessions

  • Reducing Costs of Detonation Arresting and Vapor Recovery Systems

    Emerson Exchange News
    by Jim Montague The right tool for the job isn't just the right thing to do and more efficient, it can save a bunch of money. When a major shale crude oil distributor in south Texas needed to build four marine loading docks with a total system capacity of 64,000 bph and tie three of them to a vapor collection system, it turned to John Zink Hamworthy Combustion (JZHC) to provide three dock safety units, three vapor…

  • Pfizer Virtualizes, Simplifies DeltaV System Management

    Emerson Exchange News
    By Paul Studebaker Managing servers can be a significant headache. It’s no mean feat to make sure systems are up to date, reliable and ready for fast recovery from malfunctions or a disaster. So it’s no surprise that many corporate IT departments have chosen virtualization as a way to relieve the pain. Pfizer, Inc. has virtualized 95% of its corporate servers, creating a culture that led its Sanford, N.C., facility…

  • Teaching Old Project Teams New Engineering Tricks

    Emerson Exchange News
    By Paul Studebaker “We got together and talked about how projects are run, and realized we’re doing it the same way today as we did 35 years ago,” said Mark Murphy, director, control systems, Fluor, in his session, “Engineering Outside the Box” at this week’s Emerson Global Users Exchange 2015 in Denver. “Back then, we wrote the instrument specifications on forms with pencils and did the drawings with pen and ink.…

  • Model Predictive Control Tames Oil Sand Wells

    Emerson Exchange News
    by Jim Montague Using steam to melt bitumen hundreds of meters beneath Alberta's arboreal forest, then pumping out the resulting emulsion is no walk in the park. Shifting temperatures and long dead times make controlling these steam-assisted gravity drainage (SAGD) wells extremely difficult. The wells don’t respond well to standard proportional-integral-derivative (PID) strategies; multiply this challenge times 100…

  • Pulp Maker Reduces Energy Usage & Builds Conservation Culture

    Emerson Exchange News
    Because energy is one of the largest operating expenses associated with producing pulp, Canfor Pulp —the leading Canadian-based producer of bleached, high-performance kraft paper — is highly motivated to reduce energy consumption. Management knows that even a small fraction in energy reduction translates into huge financial savings. While the company, which operates three mills in Prince George, British Columbia, had…

  • Do I need a safety certified valve?

    Emerson Exchange News
    As part of a Basic Process Control System (BPCS), control valves are dynamic, moving to desired positions that control process parameters. Shutdown valves used in a Safety Instrumented System (SIS), on the other hand, are normally dormant, coming into action only when demand conditions arise. In either situation, these final control elements (FCEs) are critical parts of process safety control. As process operators…

  • North American Beverage Maker Cools Utility Costs by $6 Million

    Emerson Exchange News
    Despite steady growth over a span of 140 years, a North American beverage manufacturer realized that its operating margins were being drained by high utility costs. With multiple, large buildings spread across more than 5 square miles, and a hodgepodge of utility systems, it wasn’t clear where electrical power or water were being wasted. But it was evident that the plant needed easier access to real time data, full system…

  • Attracting Talented Millennials to Your Organization

    Emerson Exchange News
    When MYNAH Technologies launched in 2002, it had four employees. Like many growing technology companies, MYNAH had to find solutions for expanding its staff to support its growth, particularly when dealing with a shortage of experienced process industry talent and the need for a flexible team structure in a fast changing, agile organization. Today, the company has over 40 professionals. However, it took some ingenuity…

  • New Emerson Blog Focuses on Top Quartile Performance

    Emerson Exchange News
    “This is not the time to be satisfied with being as good as everyone else,” said Steve Sonnenberg, president of Emerson Process Management in his Monday keynote address to the Emerson Global Users Exchange. Sonnenberg stressed the growing pressure across the process industries to maintain and improve profitability—even in these most challenging of times. Indeed, Emerson is committed to helping its users accomplish…

  • ‘Working Monitor’ Regulator Solves Pressure Problems

    Emerson Exchange News
    by Dave Perkon Fuel gas drives the boilers, fired heaters, generators, and compressors essentially to many process manufacturing and production operations. Accurately controlling fuel gas pressure is important for optimum combustion and overall energy efficiency, and regulator reliability is critical to ensuring continuous operations. During a presentation entitled "Gas Pressure Control: Why a Working Monitor Regulator…

  • Refinery Targets Losses with Wireless Sensors

    Emerson Exchange News
    by Paul Studebaker Overpressures must have a place to go, so it’s great that every process unit is fitted with relief valves, typically connected to common piping terminating in a flare stack or other safe discharge point. A typical refinery will have hundreds of relief valves, and Singapore Refining Company’s 290,000 bbl/day facility on Jurong Island has more than a thousand. The joint venture between Chevron and…

  • Nurturing Innovation

    Emerson Exchange News
    In a business context, successful innovation typically happens in three stages: “think it, try it, then sell it,” says Gail Golden, innovation consultant and guest speaker at Tuesday’s “Women in Innovation” luncheon at Emerson Exchange. The challenge is that many companies have a culture and a leadership style which actually stifles innovation, making it challenging to engage, attract, and retain a diverse and innovative…

  • Innovations Empower Users

    Emerson Exchange News
    It’s often said that there's no substitute for experience. And if Emerson Process Management's 135 years of expertise (dating back to the original Fisher Controls) is any indication, the company clearly continues to deliver on its time-tested adage of turning “technical milestones into customer cornerstones.” "We say that good technology fulfills a spec, but great technology delivers business value and empowers people…

  • Collaboration Elevates Expertise

    Emerson Exchange News
    "The fewer systems you need to worry about, the better," said Peter Zornio, chief strategic officer, Emerson Process Management, during the press conference, “Solving Customer Problems through Technological Innovation” at the Emerson Global User Exchange 2015 in Denver. Emerson wants to be a problem solver and one of the ways is through industry collaborations and partnerships. "While the majority comes from inside…

  • Acquisitions Expand Emerson Capabilities

    Emerson Exchange News
    By Paul Studebaker Even Emerson Process Management occasionally finds it expedient to add technology and expertise by simply buying companies with desired products and expertise. It highlighted the fruits of several such recent acquisitions at Emerson Global Users Exchange 2015 this week in Denver. Recent acquisitions include: Ameya Transmissions – Extends portfolio with gearbox actuation of manual valves…

  • Pemex Takes Control with Predictive Maintenance for Valves

    Emerson Exchange News
    At the Pemex Miguel Hidalgo Refinery in Tula de Allende, Hidalgo, Mexico, a catalytic unit with more than 100 aging control valves and other instrumentation was subject to continuous failure, low performance, and unscheduled shutdowns. Due to leakage, cavitation, noise and flashing, valve maintenance costs were high. But without any record of valve behavior or visibility into mechanical health, plant operators had no…

  • How to Justify Plant Reliability Improvements

    Emerson Exchange News
    For anyone who manages equipment in process operations, improving reliability is always a good idea. But even those who are already familiar with the pitfalls of running to failure may find it difficult to justify the cost of making reliability improvements. Traditional, non-automation based methods, such as installing spare or oversized equipment, are still used widely. With limited budgets, modern automation and…

  • Feeling Relieved about Relief-valve Monitoring

    Emerson Exchange News
    Chemtura ─ a global specialty chemical company ─ has become more stringent about monitoring its critical relief devices, which is why the company decided to revamp its monitoring to eliminate false positives at its Elmira, Ontario, facility. In the past, the company relied on the standard industry practice of confirming relief events by a sudden loss in process pressure or a failure to attain process pressure, coupled…

  • Olefin Plant Avoids Spurious Shutdowns with Wireless Monitoring

    Emerson Exchange News
    MOL Petrolkémia, formerly known as TVK, is the largest petrochemical company and sole polyolefin producer in Hungary. Before 2013, one of their olefin plants experienced significant profit and production loss due to several spurious shutdowns caused by condensate build up and plugging in the impulse lines of the differential pressure flowmeters in its compressors. When this happened, the transmitter output no longer reflected…

  • Revolutionizing Pharmaceutical Manufacturing, One Step at a Time

    Emerson Exchange News
    As the world’s largest independent biotechnology firm, Amgen has in recent years played an important role in staking out new ground in the world of biopharmaceuticals. At the Emerson Exchange Americas in Denver, Amgen’s Jeff Comstock and Emerson’s Duane North will explain how the pharmaceutical company is taking innovative pharmaceutical manufacturing techniques to a whole new level. In 2008, Amgen began outlining what…

  • Reliability Drives Top Performance

    Emerson Exchange News
    “Companies are worried about the unscheduled downtime they are experiencing, the excess maintenance cost, and in some cases, less than stellar safety records,” according to Robert S. DiStefano, reliability consultant at Emerson and founder and former CEO of Management Resources, Group, Inc. On Tuesday at Emerson Global Users Exchange, DiStefano shared his expertise on how the reliability value chain provides a systematic…

  • Project Certainty Reduces Budget, Schedule Risk

    Emerson Exchange News
    by Jim Montague Nothing in life is certain, but there's no harm and a lot of good to be gained from getting much closer to it. That's the logic behind Emerson Process Management's new Project Certainty approach to helping process control and automation users achieve top-quartile performance by eliminating costs, reducing complexity and accommodating change. Several of Emerson's experts, partners and end users spoke…

  • Sonnenberg to Users: Aspire to Top Quartile Performance

    Emerson Exchange News
    By Paul Studebaker - Falling oil and gas prices, a strengthening dollar and uncertainties in the global economy are shaking up the fortunes of many in the process industries, but there are plenty of opportunities for automation engineers to make a difference. The theme of Emerson Global Users Exchange 2015, “Elevate Your Expertise is spot on,” said Steve Sonnenberg, president, Emerson Process Management, to attendees…

  • An Integrated Approach to DeltaV Diagnostics

    Emerson Exchange News
    by Paul Studebaker “How do we want to respond to a DeltaV upset? Things happen, then there’s a reboot. How do you know about it?” asked Anthony DeJohn, R&D process systems group leader at the Bristol-Myers Squibb research facility in New Brunswick, New Jersey. “DeltaV diagnostics are good, but we needed more. It’s my job to make sure operations has information immediately. They can’t fix a problem they don’t know about…

  • Wireless MPC to be tested on divided wall distillation column

    Emerson Exchange News
    By Paul Studebaker What happens when you combine wireless transmitters and valves with model-based predictive control (MPC)? Can you maintain close control of a relatively poorly characterized piece of process equipment like a divided wall distillation column (DWC)? Researchers at the University of Texas at Austin are about to find out. Built in 1984, UT's 6-in.-diameter, 30-ft.-tall DWC has 19 temperature sensors…

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