Emerson Exchange 365

Activity

Providing Operators Process Control Valve Position Feedback

Jim Cahill

Control systems provide signals to control valves to regulate their position per the requirements of the control strategy. It is good engineering practice, especially for critical control valves to have valve travel feedback from independent devices such as position transmitters, limit switches, or positioner output feedback. Emerson’s Riyaz Ali, whom you may recall from earlier […] Read the full text.
- 10 Jan 2014
Wireless Measurements in Control Applications

Jim Cahill

As wireless technology continues to be used in process manufacturing facilities, those used in control applications are increasing. At the ISA Automation Week conference, Emerson’s Terry Blevins, Mark Nixon, and Marty Zielinski authored the paper, Using Wireless Measurements in Control Applications. Terry and Marty presented it for Automation Week attendees. They discussed the impact of […] Read the full text.
- 8 Jan 2014
Energy Optimization and Wireless Steam Traps

Jim Cahill

Many process manufacturing, oil & gas processing, and other industrial processes were designed in an era of inexpensive energy. This has not been the case for many years now. Emerson’s Danny Vandeput has written a South African Instrument and Control article, Control the cost of energy, to highlight how technology is helping to address these […] Read the full text.
- 9 Dec 2013
How Efficient is Your Steam System?

Jim Cahill

Marie Petersson, working with Emerson’s Australian team, highlights ways to improve your plant’s energy efficiency by continuously monitoring your steam traps. As the world becomes a “smaller” place and process manufacturers are forced to compete in a global market place, we see more and more industries shifting offshore looking for lower cost ways to manufacture […] Read the full text.
- 12 Nov 2013
Remote Expert Support with Wireless Mobile Voice and Video

Jim Cahill

Emerson’s Neil Peterson shares how wireless technologies are improving remote expert support. His abstract: The wireless Mobile Voice and Video solution is geared to provide Field Technicians immediate real time remote support from subject matter Experts anywhere, anytime, to avoid lost production time, conduct process machine maintenance or remote training while reducing the time and […] Read the full text.
- 3 Oct 2013
Petroleum Company Improves Pump Health Monitoring

Jim Cahill

Emerson’s Asad Malik, Sanjeev Vyas, and Zyad Al Irhayim presented, Petroleum Company improves Pump Health Monitoring and Secures Production Goals with Emerson Wireless Vibration Monitoring Technology. Their abstract: Petroleum Company in ME monitors critical pumps across their oil field using an offline data collection technology. It takes one whole month for operators to collect all […] Read the full text.
- 1 Oct 2013
MultiVariable Wireless Measurements

Jim Cahill

There’ll be lots of news coming out next week at the Emerson Exchange Americas conference in Dallas/Fort Worth, Texas. I’ll have a “Live” page to announce on Monday where we’ll be gathering all the happenings to make it easier to follow the action, if you won’t be there with us in person. I heard from […] Read the full text.
- 26 Sep 2013
Adding Missing Measurements in Refineries

Jim Cahill

We’re now about six weeks away from the September 30-Oct 4 Emerson Exchange conference in the Dallas-Fort Worth, Texas area. In fact, today, August 15, 2013 is the deadline for Early Bird registration—so if you were considering joining us, you’ll want to act today for the lowest conference fee rate. I mention that because I […] Read the full text.
- 15 Aug 2013
Using Wireless Sensing to Improve Mining Operations

Jim Cahill

Emerson’s Douglas Morris of the Mining and Power industry teams, explores the role of wireless technology for miners. Globally, miners are faced with increasing headwinds that are combining to erode operating margins. Declining ore body grades and fewer skilled workers are increasing production costs while fluctuating global commodity prices add to an air of uncertainty. [...] Read the full text.
- 12 Aug 2013
Wirelessly Monitoring Offshore Africa Oil and Gas Platform

Jim Cahill

A major oil & gas producer needed a way to improve the accuracy of its measurements and develop its offshore monitoring processes off the coast of Africa. Emerson’s Ali Alkasah shared this story with me and noted that platform personnel were conducting manual documentation of measurement variables, which often led to challenging paper trails and [...] Read the full text.
- 24 Jul 2013
Monitoring Cooling Towers to Avoid Unplanned Downtime

Jim Cahill

Reliability of plant assets and process operations remains near the top of every manufacturer’s list of concerns. According to the ARC Advisory Group: The global process industries lose $20 billion, or 5% annual production, due to unscheduled downtime and poor quality. ARC estimates that almost 80% of these losses are preventable. Equipment failures are included [...] Read the full text.
- 11 Jul 2013
How SIOT Upgraded Its Tank-Level Measurement Inexpensively Without Sacrificing Safely

Jim Cahill

Here’s another guest post by me, Chris Womack. Custody transfer today’s topic—specifically, improving level and temperature measurement of crude oil for custody transfer, while minimizing cost and disturbances to current operations. Even more specifically, when Italy’s SIOT (Società Italiana per l’Oleodotto Transalpino S.p.A.) sought to update the aging radar-based level gauges that monitored its 32 storage [...] Read…
- 28 Jun 2013
The Control System Rental

Jim Cahill

Here’s an idea from Emerson’s Anand Iyer. Would a rental solution generate sufficient justification to experiment with those borderline cases?Back in 2008, working in maintenance group for a leading petrochemical giant in India, there was this discussion on how some measurements were needed for analyzing if there was a savings potential. The control system was [...] Read the full text.
- 19 Jun 2013
Wireless Safety Shower and Eyewash Station Monitoring

Jim Cahill

Let’s close out the week with a short post showing the components to monitor your plant’s safety showers and eye wash stations. These are often not in locations easily accessible to instrumentation wiring infrastructure to connect back to the plant automation system to alert the plant operators that someone is in need of immediate assistance. [...] Read the full text.
- 10 May 2013
Offshore Oil and Gas Essential Asset Monitoring Webcast

Jim Cahill

The offshore atmosphere can be particularly corrosive to oil & gas production assets. This Thursday, April 11 at 11:00 & 14:30 CEST (5am & 8:30am EDT), the Emerson European team will conduct a webinar, Essential Asset Monitoring—Increasing offshore production revenues through wireless technology: Industry averages suggest that roughly 5% of production capacity is lost each [...] Read the full text.
- 10 Apr 2013
Process Control with Wireless Devices

Jim Cahill

Emerson’s Chris Womack discusses process control with IEC 62591 wireless devices in today’s guest post. Using wireless devices in process control still isn’t that common, but it’s going to be. With its quick and easy installation, wireless technology is often used for providing additional measurement data that’s not essential to control. But the flexibility of [...] Read the full text.
- 15 Feb 2013
Using Wireless Sensors for Personnel Safety and Regulatory Compliance

Jim Cahill

The latest Control magazine included a supplement by Emerson’s Rosemount team on ways to operate a plant closer to its full potential. One article, Boost Safety and Compliance While Testing New Limits, provides ways process manufacturers have deployed wireless technology to help address safety and compliance challenges. I’ll highlight a few excerpts from the article. [...] Read the full text.
- 4 Feb 2013
Remote, Automated Plant Asset Monitoring

Jim Cahill

Wireless technologies have established their value in process automation. In a MaintWorld magazine article, Remote, Automated Monitoring Keeps a Watchful Eye on Essential Assets 24/7 (pp. 14-16), Emerson’s Nikki Bishop and Aaron Crews describe how these wireless technologies can be and have been put to use. They note the technology shift that has occurred in [...] Read the full text.
- 9 Jan 2013
Complementary Wireless Communication Technologies

Jim Cahill

Ever wonder why we have multiple forms of wireless communications on our PCs, smart phone, and tablet devices? 3G, 4G, 802.11, Bluetooth all serve a purpose in the types of information that is conveyed wirelessly between devices. For example, a Wi-Fi connection between your smart phone and home or office network provides higher bandwidth communications [...] Read the full text.
- 27 Nov 2012
Vibration Energy Harvesting-Perpetual Power for Emerson Wireless Transmitters

Jim Cahill

The promise of harvesting energy for wireless devices attracted me to this Emerson Exchange workshop. The abstract: This presentation will highlight how vibration energy harvester (VEH) can be utilized as the primary power source for traditional “battery only” powered Emerson wireless transmitters used for process monitoring within a multitude of industrial environments.All aspects of construction, [...] Read the full…
- 9 Oct 2012
Cooling Tower Condition Monitoring Webinar

Jim Cahill

I heard from Emerson’s Nick Taylor about a webinar on cooling tower condition monitoring taking place tomorrow, August 16 at 9am GMT and repeated at 13:30GMT / 9:30 EDT. Here’s a brief description: Detecting changes in equipment condition like gearbox electrical motors and cooling water conditions are the keys to avoiding cooling tower damage, environmental [...] Read the full text.
- 15 Aug 2012
Cleaning up Mining and Metal Operations

Jim Cahill

An industry commitment and new technologies are contributing to cleaner metals and mining operations. Emerson’s Michael Pearson, a member of the Rosemount Measurement team and metals and mining industry team, shares examples of the progress being made. Mining and metal refining are considered some of the most environmentally friendly processes, championed by communities and environmental [...] Read the full text.
- 23 Jul 2012
Connecting Remote Wireless Device Networks Together

Jim Cahill

How do you connect a remote area with IEC 62591 WirelessHART field devices back to another area of your plant, mill, or field? Emerson’s Neil Peterson shows how to do this in this 1:51 second video taken at the Cisco Connected Industries Booth at Cisco Live 2012. In the video, Neil describes how the wireless [...] Read the full text.
- 12 Jul 2012
Start with the Pipe Racks and Branches for Your Wireless Communications Infrastructure

Jim Cahill

In refineries and petrochemical plants, pipe racks are the “backbones” of the process units. It is also the place Emerson’s Gary Hawkins, a senior refining consultant, recommends should be completely covered with an IEC 62591 wireless device communications infrastructure. This complete coverage would include the branches to the process unit areas. You may recall Gary [...] Read the full text.
- 10 Jul 2012
Control What You Can Measure

Jim Cahill

You’ve likely heard the phrase, “You can’t control what you don’t measure.” Emerson’s Jonas Berge, in a Control Engineering Asia article, Wireless for Asset Uptime, notes that many plants were built years ago with the minimum amount of instrumentation required for control. Often it’s difficult to go back and add instrumentation if the cables, junction [...] Read the full text.
- 28 Jun 2012