There’s a lot of talk in the industry about the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), digital transformation, and digital technologies. There is enough interest, though, among utility executives in the promise of digital technologies–which typically includes some combination of wired and wireless sensors for monitoring, sophisticated algorithms, machine learning and artificial intelligence–that it’s time to go beyond talking about the technology and focus on actual plant applications that give you more insight and help you improve unit operations.
One example is the use of wireless acoustic sensors to monitor for and detect heat recovery steam generator (HRSG) tube leaks. By detecting when a leak first starts, a plant can avoid tube bundle damage and can schedule an outage rather than having the leak force the unit off line.
Another example is to use sensors to trend differential pressure across tube bundles which can help detect ammonia salt buildup downstream of a selective catalytic reduction (SCR) system.
During the upcoming POWER-GEN conference in Orlando (December 4-6), Emerson will showcase several plant applications using digital technologies. Whether you want to use wireless devices to solve a specific problem or you want to go bigger and eliminate manual operator rounds, we will have experts in our booth #2121 to discuss how you can make digital transformation real at your utility.
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