Let’s end the week with a quick 1:48 YouTube video about Plantweb Insight to better analyze and use the data for safe, reliable and compliant operations. Plantweb Insight is enabled by wireless sensors and networks and gives users the knowledge to make effective and timely decisions The suite of Plantweb Insight applications provide instant access and visibility into plant assets in an intuitive way without the...

Author: Vincenzo Sipala How Plant Downtime Effects Your Bottom Line Due to improper control valve selection, the valve trim pictured above was damaged by solids from the fluid, which was originally specified as clean. Keeping an intricate process plant at maximum productivity for multiple decades is no easy feat. Operations downtime caused by unscheduled maintenance issues continues to be a major cause of concern...

Author: Stefano Belletti Process plants, not only in the oil and gas sector, are becoming increasingly complex in a competitive environment. Therefore, the performance of regulating and modulating valves is also an area where we need to focus our attention to improve the process and optimize costs. Precision, reliability, speed of operation, and fail-safe capabilities are among the most critical aspects of the...

Temperature control is a critical factor for many food & beverage processes. In a Flow Control magazine article, Selecting Valves for Food and Beverage Applications , Emerson’s Blake Coleman highlights the importance of the right valves and proper tuning to get optimum performance. Blake opens with what poor control may mean: …the best-case result would be lost efficiency, with worst case a completely unusable...

Author: Paolo Tomaini Conventional power plants are being disrupted by an increasing demand for renewable energy. The priority in providing energy to the grid associated with the intermittent intrinsic nature of the renewable energy output is creating a shift from base-load power down to cycling in traditional plants and causing failures. The demand for renewables is only expected to grow over the next few decades...

Our world is dependent on all the copper wire distributing electricity and communications signals over great distances and throughout our homes and businesses. Mining and refining this copper into the purity required poses safety, efficiency and reliability challenges for global miners. I learned quite a bit about the mining process and its challenges from Emerson’s Alena Johnson excellent Mining Engineering magazine...

Cell therapy is when: …cellular material is injected into a patient; [1] this generally means intact, living cells . For example, T cells capable of fighting cancer cells via cell-mediated immunity may be injected in the course of immunotherapy . For manufacturers in the Life Sciences industry, making these therapies poses challenges since each batch is specific to a given patient. In this 2:25 YouTube video...

The rise of smart phone and tablets has enabled businesses to completely rethink workflows and access to information. Within the world of manufacturing, this is even true for supervising and managing the process. In a Chemical Engineering article, Engineering Challenges? There’s a Mobile Application for That , Emerson’s Mariana Dionisio describes how the DeltaV Mobile application: …allows users, such as operations...

Maintaining robust defenses from cyber-attacks is a priority for manufacturers. They rely on their automation suppliers to provide security-hardened technologies and cybersecurity services to help defend against new attacks and maintain resiliency and robustness over time. One key element in robustness is quickly finding, fixing and distributing patches for newly discovered vulnerabilities. Industrial control systems...

Authors: Tom Snowden , Greg Schirm Photovoltaic power stations (or solar parks) have traditionally used PLCs as their preferred control devices. Size, ruggedness, and cost are often cited as reasons for using PLCs. With the release of the Ovation Compact Controller , Emerson is merging the scalability of PLCs with the power of the Ovation distributed control system on photovoltaic (PV) solar projects. The compact...