Discussions / Questions - Recent Threads

CPChem tips: One way to measure RPM, pulse count, frequency, tachometer, etc.

CPChem Bartlesville — Sat, 17 Jan 2026 01:58:32 GMT

This example used a Hall Effect sensor to detect teeth on a steel gear. The CALC block is needed if your gear does not have exactly 60 teeth (60 pulses per revolution).

NOTE: Must use the isolated DI CHARM and must use an injected power terminal block.

DCS deltav communication with SQL

Hugo Couvreur — Wed, 05 Feb 2025 13:31:45 GMT

Hello,

I am installing new weighing cells in my production site, those cells have embedded software that controls & check the weighing but also if the material is the correct one. Datas are then stored in a SQL server created by the supplier.

I would like to know how to read this data in the database (SQL) with DeltaV to pursue the sequence in our DCS once the weighing has been checked and confirmed. Those cells have not been installed yet, I just want informations on this type of communication (OPC UA ? TCP IP ?). Currently we have DeltaV V13, and will be upgraded to V15 this summer.

If you need more details let me know,

Thank you for your help.

Hugo.

Weighing cells sql server communication with deltav

Hugo Couvreur — Wed, 05 Feb 2025 13:30:34 GMT

Hello,

If you need more details let me know,

Thank you for your help.

Hugo.

Micromotion 1700 Transmitter not communicate with Core Processor .

Siddhesh Halde — Fri, 01 Mar 2024 05:23:07 GMT

Micromotion 1700 Transmitter not communicate with Core Processor . It shows error A09,A014,A026. All Data in Transmitter showing '0'. Even tx not taking any new configuration.

RAMP FUNCTION NOT COMPLETE

kravindranath — Mon, 12 Feb 2024 17:22:57 GMT

RAMP OUT matches the END_VALUE. RAMP Enable is true. But RAMP doesn't show complete. This happens only once in a while. TRK_IN_D= 0

. Any thoughts, why? The sequence gets stuck and doesn't proceed further to the next step in SFC.

Trying to communicate with EIOC to a AB Powerflex 70 drive using ethernet ip

wtc-wv — Mon, 30 Oct 2023 11:55:28 GMT

Using a EIOC ver 13.1 trying to communicate with a Powerflex 70-EC drive with 20-COMM-E communication card. Trying to use class 1 messaging using input assembly = 1 output assembly = 2 and configuration assembly = 6. Connection priority = scheduled, connection type = point to point and RPI = 400 ms. Input size = 8 bytes and output size = 4 bytes. It will not communicate successfully with the drive. I get 'device no comms' status in diagnostics. Have tried many different sizes of input/outputs different connections. Will not communicate. Currently just trying to read minimum control 16 bit reference / feedback from drive. Not trying to read datalinks. Have tried enabling all data links and reading them but no success. Anyone have suggestion on what parameters needed to communicate with this powerflex 70? I can communicate with this drive using Compactlogix PLC. With PLC drive works fine.

EIOC Protocol, Ethernet IP VS Ethernet IP Control Tag Integration

wtc-wv — Thu, 05 May 2022 10:44:49 GMT

I have been using a EIOC with the Ethernet IP Interface. Communicating with Allen Bradley PLC's, Toledo Scales and other equipment using Class 1 and Class 3 Messaging and UCMM with Logix Tags. I would like to know what is the difference between this protocol and the Control Tag Integration protocol? What advantages or disadvantages does Tag Integration do for me? I have tried to research this topic and have not found a lot of information. I am not that familiar with Allen Bradley and tags. I am running V14 so I can use Tag Integration if I want to. I am adding another EIOC and I am interested in knowing the exact differences so I can order the other EIOC. I have read where the Control Tag can read string data. That is a nice plus that I might be able to use to send text back and forth to an HMI. Also I have read that Control Tag allows the EIOC LDT (Logic Device) to map signals to the PLC's UDT(User Defined data type). I do not understand how this works or what advantage it is to me. I have not been able to find and manuals or detailed description on Guardian. There has to be a really straight forward reason to have this extra protocol or Emerson would have not created it. Any information would be appreciated.

Typical Causes of a 5% Comm Error Rate with Device Status

SLHouston — Wed, 31 Mar 2021 18:24:41 GMT

I have started having some intermittent uncertain and bad status indications with a HART variable from a DVC. Diagnostics indicates "5% Comm Error Rate with Device" status. I curious about what types of issues typically result in this status in Diagnostics.

I'd appreciate any feedback that could be provided on the subject.

Binding a Module Block and fetching bounded module name in logic

Devpriy sahu — Fri, 09 Oct 2020 17:16:52 GMT

Hi,

Query -

1. A module block is bounded to some physical module

2. We want to access name of this module bounded to DEV1 in logic.

Explored:- 1. Looked for a parameter in DEV1, but didn't found any.

2. Looked for FMT, it used MODULE_BLOCK_BINDING.MNAME. Tried using this field in ACT block but parse errors.

Is there anyway to do this ??

Thankyou

Chemical-makers embracing digital transformation

Emerson Exchange News — Thu, 26 Sep 2019 21:43:32 GMT

Mike Bacidore

Digital transformation is spreading throughout the chemical industry. At 2019 Emerson Global Users Exchange in Nashville, Tennessee, signs of that shift were evident from the comments of panelists speaking at the Industry Forum for Chemicals.

“We have wireless infrastructure on 60-70% of our sites,” said Greg Aguilar, global reliability engineer at Celanese. “We’re piloting two projects using KNet [Emerson’s recently acquired data analytics solution], and we are using AMS at some of our larger sites.”

3M is keeping pace, too. “In many areas, we are well on the way,” said Lendon Haggard, manufacturing technology manager at 3M. “Our corporate PACESetter initiative is something most companies don’t have.” 3M’s corporate initiative gives its stakeholders a set of standards, a way to think about innovation. “Our division has specific things that are different, but we have to share those responsibilities.”

San Jacinto College in Houston has built custom laboratories with industry members that went live in August. “They were looking forward to electronic logs and procedures, as well as maintenance work orders on mobile devices,” said Jim Griffin, vice president of petrochemical, energy and technology at the college. “We incorporated that into our curriculum.”

Petrochemical company Braskem Idesa has an expert team that looks for new ventures. “It’s a good way to do it,” said Stephany Villarreal, automation and digital transformation engineer. They look for suppliers whose offerings fit company needs.

This search for transformative ideas means newer technologies abound at companies on the digital-transformation journey. “We are using remote monitoring, and we use drones,” said Aguilar. “We recently piloted some analytics and machine learning.”

3M also uses drones and monitoring technologies for predictive maintenance (PdM). “We do everything, but less in augmented reality and wearables,” said Haggard. “We have tried them, and they’re very neat, but we have other things we have to work on.”

Safety, especially eliminating confined-space entry, is a number-one driver, according to Griffin. Light detection and ranging (LiDAR) remote-sensing technology is important for environmental detection and repair. “We have performance-learning platforms, and we’re looking to add some augmented reality,” said Griffin. “We teach data analytics, but I teach process technology and instrumentation, too.”

Perceived success

Perception is everything when it comes to new initiatives, especially at companies looking to justify investments in digital transformations. “Several of our initiatives have been successful,” said Aguilar. “We’re including some machine-learning models. We’ve been able to identify equipment issues that have gone under the radar for months or years. We try to define what the success criteria are up front, and we look at proof of concept and return on investment. How are we impacting our business? How can we increase productivity? Or how can we avoid lost production?”

3M has been successful in several areas, said Haggard. “Our reliability program is part of the factory of the future,” he explained. “We’re at the point now where no one is questioning whether it will work. We’re now asking how much it will cost and where the funding is coming from. We measure success in terms of productivity.”

At 3M, IT makes the rules, Haggard admitted, but the collaboration has improved, largely because of the success of new initiatives. “In the past few years, we’ve made great strides,” he said. “Now we’re at the point where, when we call corporate IT, they’re being told by executives to help us.”

Having successful cases to show goes a long way, added Aguilar. “It’s getting the sites to request the new technology.” he said. “It helps to build that trust.”

IT-OT convergence

Collaboration between IT and OT has often been accelerated by digital-transformation implementations. Some have even changed reporting structures in organizations.

“This year we have a new structure globally,” explained Villarreal. “IT and OT belong to the same vice president.”

It’s also affected protocols. “We’re seeing new ways of getting data to the cloud,” said Ted Masters, president and CEO, FieldComm Group. “We’re trying to integrate a collection of different technologies, bring them all together and integrate them in a common model. Advanced physical layer (APL) means adding Ethernet to field devices. The next-generation field device will be faster and more powerful.”

Both Aguilar and Haggard agreed that using an APL-standard field device sounds promising, but that might still be a few years away.

Accepting a non-analog field device would be fine for regulatory and supervisory control, but not safety, said Haggard. “In chemical plants, EHS is involved,” he said. “We are making decisions differently with other people involved. When we say, ‘safety,’ we’re at a different level. We’re storing and working with chemicals that are dangerous.”

And wireless technology is being used primarily for monitoring, but both 3M and Celanese are using it for some control in certain conditions.

Lessons learned

Embarking on a digital transformation comes with stumbling blocks, but organizations need to overcome them and learn from those hurdles.

Aguilar quipped, “If you’d asked me IT’s job two years ago, I would have said it was to make it harder for me to work. As part of our digital-transformation journey, bringing IT in early and treating them like a partner has really been helpful. Now people think I work for IT. Now we understand each other.”

Buy-in is also the biggest lesson learned at 3M. “Right now, we have a lot of need for buy-in at the operator level because we’re changing the way someone does a job,” said Haggard. “We’re using a highly skilled hourly individual to do higher-level tuning, just under what our controls engineers would do.”

In the end, it’s a transformation of the business process, said Masters. “You’ve got to have collaboration and executive backing. Otherwise, you may have all the transformation in the world, but you could end up doing things the same way you were before.”

Event list

Jan van der Velde — Fri, 14 Jun 2019 07:58:28 GMT

How can I create an event list with only the active bypass of interlocks or shutdowns?

I can create a event list with all bypass events, but I need a list of all active bypass and not when it changed from 0 or 1

Lifting the Lid on Tank Storage and Management

Emerson Exchange News — Mon, 01 Oct 2018 23:01:46 GMT

The atmospheric storage tanks used in refineries and chemical plants house some of the world’s most essential (and sometimes, volatile) liquids, gasses and compounds. While that makes safety and regulatory compliance primary and constant considerations, many tank owners also grapple with overfilling issues and the effects of poor tank pressure control on a regular basis.

Issues related to overfilling and poor tank pressure control can include, but are not limited to premature venting, excessive valve operation, product spillage and/or damage to the tank, surrounding equipment and the environment as well as a host of additional safety concerns. These issues, if not addressed properly, can ultimately lead to high maintenance and operating costs, poor product quality and a potentially unsafe working environment.

To better tackle these challenges, tank owners must stay current on the latest tank types, sizing considerations, and industry standards.

The most common tank types include open-top, fixed-roof, and floating roof, all of which provide unique benefits and ideal use cases. Owners/Operators generally see improved safety and reduced product loss when utilizing the different types of floating roof tanks, which are more effective at controlling the vapor space in the tank.

Vapor space itself is fundamental to understanding the concepts of “in-breathing” and “out-breathing” and their effects on determining ideal sizing for critical tank components such as breather valves, and tank blanketing regulators, and emergency vents. Having a well thought out and designed multilayer system of tank pressure/vacuum control is essential to optimizing process operations and plant safety as well as reducing operating and maintenance costs.

Another important consideration in the operational safety of tanks is preventing overfills. In recent years, the industry has focused on improving overfill prevention and has even made Edition 4 of API-2350 an industry standard for overfill prevention in petroleum storage facilities. Emerson has been a long-time participant helping the industry to develop these standards and providing solutions to assure safe tank operations using state-of-the-art radar-based tank-gauging technology along with safety integrity level (SIL) certified overfill prevention systems for all types of bulk liquid storage tanks and pressurized spheres and bullets.

With governing bodies like the American Petroleum Institute (API) and the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) helping to define the most widely used best practices and guidelines for tank storage today, better understanding each of the considerations above can not only help tank owners better equip and instrument their tanks, it will ensure safer, more reliable, and cost-effective tank storage for years to come—from top—to bottom.

Learn more about Managing Storage Tank Pressure and Overfill Prevention:

https://www.emersonautomationexperts.com/2018/safety/managing-storage-tank-pressure-overfill-prevention/

New Blending Brochure For Specialty Chemicals

Marcelo Carugo — Tue, 25 Jul 2017 14:54:04 GMT

The new Blending Solutions Brochure is now available to share with your chemical customers. It presents Emerson’s comprehensive, cross business unit blending solutions for specialty chemical blending as well as fuels, lubes & grease, and crude blending applications, and highlights our consulting services and PlantWeb digital ecosystem capabilities. The brochure is posted on the Chemical, Blending, and Crude Unit pages on the Sales Portal, and you can use this link to send a low-res PDF to your customers. Printed brochures are also available in the publication stockroom

CERAWeek 2017 - Videos

Marcelo Carugo — Tue, 14 Mar 2017 19:59:02 GMT

Last week, Emerson attended CERAWeek, and IHS markit event. (So called the Davos of Energy.)

Many of the sessions were taped, and they are available at CERAWeek Live.

http://live.ceraweek.com/

click into Video Gallery.

You can find David Farr on a plenary about what ever happened to Globalization, and also, in the changing workforce on the agora studio.

Many of our customers are in the videos.

Take a look, they are worth watching.

Marcelo Carugo

We all want to improve the performance of our chemical plant shutdowns, but just where do we start ?

Julian Annison — Sun, 10 Jul 2016 21:18:28 GMT

With all the changes in automation technology over the last 10 years, improvements have become available to help control worklists and reduce durations. Often this is gradual change and we don’t take the opportunity to step back and see just what can be done differently now.

Having spent 20+ years in operations & engineering in the chemical industry and then the last year with Emerson, I’ve now seen Shutdowns from two very different perspectives.

ThisTuesday the 12th Jul, I’ll be hosting a live interactive webinar “How to reduce the risk in your next Shutdown, Turnaround or Outage?”

During the webinar I’ll share ideas I’d wish I had known more about when I was a chemical customer – it would be great to hear some views from other chemical end users who have worked on planned shutdowns – why not register & join the conversation?

Interesting Chemical topics at 2015 Emerson Exchange

Peter Cox — Tue, 11 Aug 2015 14:59:57 GMT

Interested to know how your peers use automation to make their turnarounds more efficient? Robust operational data and systems can be key to challenging
historic work list items, reducing re-commissioning times, and minimizing risks on start-up.

Drop by the chemical industry forum during this year’s Emerson Exchange, where Jos Berkien ( AkzoNobel) , Carl Stumpe ( BASF ) and Julian Annison ( Emerson )
will share their expertise on this topic.

To make your conference scheduling easier, check out the list of workshops and sessions the chemical team would like to highlight.

How a mistuned temperature loop caused a total plant shut down

Sudhir Jain — Wed, 29 Jul 2015 16:13:09 GMT

Problem: Recently, a waste management company in Texas experienced issues with the temperature control loop of their thermal oxidizer—resulting in an oxidizer shutdown. Thermal oxidizers are heated by natural gas to an operating temperature of 1400 ºF for oxidizing the waste gases. The temperature must be carefully controlled during startup, because rapid temperature changes can damage the unit’s firebrick; normal procedure calls for the temperature to be ramped up by 100 ºF per hour in steps.

However, as the loop was not tuned correctly, the oxidizer temperature was fluctuating by 125 to 150 ºF. Not only did this affect the oxidation process, but the uncontrollable 150 ºF swings prohibited proper startup of the oxidizer itself which caused thermal oxidizer shut down.

Solution: Installing an EnTech toolkit in on the customer’s DeltaV system, which uses lambda tuning techniques to recommend effective non-oscillatory tuning strategies, provided us with information to analyze the issue. Using this data, I was able to stabilize the oxidizer’s temperature control so that it held at 1400 ±8 ºF, thus enabling the thermal oxidizer to resume full operation.

Learning: It is common for a plant manager to become accustomed to a loop or valve not working “properly”. This type of myopia can prohibit the manager from investigating a solution or a better way to run things. Even, in this case, when the malfunction is cutting directly into the plant’s noncompliance to emission limits.

It took a major shutdown for the operation to reach out for assistance. However, our experts happily provide proactive guidance on how to properly tune loops, valves and more. Utilizing Emerson’s consulting expertise and technology, this plant is now equipped to properly tune other loops in advance of such incidents and resume profitable operations.

2015 Emerson exchange - Chemical Industry Forum: Call for ideas for panel topics

Peter Cox — Mon, 16 Mar 2015 14:30:02 GMT

Carla Koritnik, Joel Holmes and Robert Sentz (Industry Forum Chair) and I are looking for panel members and ideas to participate in the Chemical Industry Forum at the Emerson Global Users Exchange in Denver, CO, October 12-16th.

The format is 90 minutes with three topics of discussion. Each panel member speaks for about 15 minutes to initiate dialogue followed by 15 minutes of discussion and Q&A with the audience. The 30 minute process is repeated for each topic. Any topic idea in this time of low oil prices will be a bonus for the audience. In considering topics please let me know what are your main issues and concerns today i.e. what takes up most of your time and resources and how are you solving those issues? Anything can be valuable for your industry peers. Topics could include ( but are not limited to ):

- Plant Safety

- Regulatory Compliance

- Bottom line improvements throughput maximizing throughput, increasing reliability,lowering energy costs,...

- Worker effectiveness

- ...

The chemical industry forum takes place 2:30-4:00pm MT on Monday, October 12^th in Denver, CO. Additional information can be found online at http://www.emersonexchange.org/americas/

Please contact peter.cox@emerson.com if interested.

Taking the guesswork out of solids measurement

ahessel — Thu, 25 Sep 2014 14:08:24 GMT

The new Rosemount 5708 3D Solids Scanner is the only system available that provides continuous level and measured volume data for solids applications. More information about this truly unique product is available here: http://bit.ly/RMT3DSolids

...or come and see for yourself at the Emerson Exchange exhibit (6-8^th October) where we will feature a full display of the product on the level booth!

Featured chemical workshops at 2014 Emerson Exchange

Peter Cox — Thu, 21 Aug 2014 17:17:35 GMT

This year’s agenda includes a full schedule of valuable content tailored to our customers in the chemical industry. Visit our Emerson Exchange chemical web page for a rundown of the workshops, sessions, and exhibits, that we’ve hand-picked for you, as well as a preview of this year’s chemical industry forum. Space is becoming limited, so please register today if you haven’t already.

http://www2.emersonprocess.com/en-US/industries/Chemical/Pages/EmersonExchange.aspx

Content Based Analysis during PAS Modernization

Cody Long — Thu, 21 Aug 2014 16:11:12 GMT

Are there any examples of where analytics were applied to a legacy PAS configuration prior to modernization? Specifically, was the legacy configuration migrated via bruteforce or was an effort made to understand the content of the configuration? Were similar loops identified? Were custom loops identified? I am seeking input as to what analysis steps are taken to translate a legacy configuration to DeltaV.

How much impact will fracking have on the chemicals industry?

Lydia Miller — Wed, 27 Mar 2013 14:22:10 GMT

Talking About a Revolution – Fracking Turns Chemical Industry Upside–Down http://ow.ly/jsRhL