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DeltaV Blog

DeltaV distributed control system blog
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Operations Management Blog
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Ovation Blog
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PAC Systems & Industrial Computing Blog
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Safety Instrumented Systems Blog
- 101 posts
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Blog - Post List

Jim Cahill
- 21 Feb 2020
Safety Instrumented Systems Blog: Safety Shower and Location Awareness Wireless Monitoring

Marcio Donnangelo In an earlier post, How Digital Transformation Can Impact Compliance for Environmental and Safety Regulation , I shared some safety examples. Emerson’s Marcio Donnangelo explored specific examples more deeply in his 2020 4C HSE conference presentation, Safety Showers and Location Awareness – Improving Safety with Wireless Monitoring. Marcio opened describing three ways to help create a safe environment...
Jim Cahill
- 11 Feb 2020
DeltaV Blog: ISASecure Family of Certifications Builds Foundation for Automation Cybersecurity

Alexandre Peixoto Andre Ristaino Authors: Emerson’s Alexandre Peixoto , International Society of Automation (ISA)’s Andre Ristaino Selecting, engineering, implementing, and operating a control system is a significant, long-term investment. Applying a defense-in-depth strategy to protect the process from cybersecurity risks is another significant, long-term investment that can be made more complicated if the inherent...
Jim Cahill
- 6 Feb 2020
DeltaV Blog: Compressor Anti-Surge Control Value Improvement Practice

Pete Sharpe Author: Pete Sharpe An ethylene plant has a number of very large, very critical compressors which will cause the entire plant to shutdown if they ever trip. The cracked gas compressor increases the entire cold-side feed from around 3 psig to ~475 psig, typically through 5 stages. The two refrigeration compressors are the next biggest compressors that can also shut down the entire plant if they trip...
Jim Cahill
- 4 Feb 2020
DeltaV Blog: Modernization of DCS and PLC with Electronic Marshalling

Scott Ross Now, with many control systems being 30+ years old, most of these legacy systems have been placed in to end of life or retired lifecycle status. This means no further factory support is available. I caught up with Emerson’s Scott Ross about some of the choices that must be considered moving forward. Manufacturers and producers face options whether to modernize to a newer family of distributed control systems...
Jim Cahill
- 21 Jan 2020
Safety Instrumented Systems Blog: Self-Contained Hydraulic Emergency Shutdown System

Sergio Vaz Lopes A safety instrumented function (SIF) in a safety instrumented system (SIS) contains a sensor, logic solver and final element. All must function properly in the event of a safety demand to take the process into a safe state in coordination with other SIFs. The final element consists of several parts including the isolation valve, actuator, pressure pilots, test valves and other components as required...
Jim Cahill
- 21 Jan 2020
Safety Instrumented Systems Blog: Self-Contained Hydraulic Emergency Shutdown System

Sergio Vaz Lopes A safety instrumented function (SIF) in a safety instrumented system (SIS) contains a sensor, logic solver and final element. All must function properly in the event of a safety demand to take the process into a safe state in coordination with other SIFs. The final element consists of several parts including the isolation valve, actuator, pressure pilots, test valves and other components as required...
Jim Cahill
- 20 Jan 2020
Safety Instrumented Systems Blog: Non-contacting Radar for Automatic Tank Gauging and Overfill Prevention Systems

Bulk liquid storage tanks often contain fluids that are hazardous, flammable and/or explosive. These tanks require not only a control system to control levels but and overfill prevention system (OPS) as layer of protection beyond the control system. This basic process control system (BPCS) is commonly referred to as an automatic tank gauging (ATG) system and the OPS is the safety instrumented system (SIS). A Fluid...
Jim Cahill
- 20 Jan 2020
Safety Instrumented Systems Blog: Non-contacting Radar for Automatic Tank Gauging and Overfill Prevention Systems

Bulk liquid storage tanks often contain fluids that are hazardous, flammable and/or explosive. These tanks require not only a control system to control levels but and overfill prevention system (OPS) as layer of protection beyond the control system. This basic process control system (BPCS) is commonly referred to as an automatic tank gauging (ATG) system and the OPS is the safety instrumented system (SIS). A Fluid...
Jim Cahill
- 8 Jan 2020
Safety Instrumented Systems Blog: Understanding Functional Safety Concepts and Final Element Suitability

Riyaz Ali The world of functional safety has its own tribal language and acronyms, e.g. safety instrumented systems (SISs), safety instrumented functions (SIFs), logic solvers, final elements (FEs), safety integrity level (SIL), probability of failure on demand (PFD), etc. In a Hydrocarbon Engineering article, Keep in the Safety Loop , Emerson’s Riyaz Ali does an excellent job of defining and demystifying these phrases...
Jim Cahill
- 22 Nov 2019
DeltaV Blog: A Glimpse into Future Control Systems

Let’s end this week before Thanksgiving here in the U.S. with a vision, “…on how plant managers, operators, and engineers may digitally transform the way plants and teams operate.”, with this 3-minute YouTube video, DeltaV Technology for Next-Generation Operations . Technologies shown in this vision include facial recognition for secure operator login, voice & gesture user interface for simplified operations, application...
Jim Cahill
- 22 Nov 2019
DeltaV Blog: A Glimpse into Future Control Systems

Let’s end this week before Thanksgiving here in the U.S. with a vision, “…on how plant managers, operators, and engineers may digitally transform the way plants and teams operate.”, with this 3-minute YouTube video, DeltaV Technology for Next-Generation Operations . Technologies shown in this vision include facial recognition for secure operator login, voice & gesture user interface for simplified operations, application...
Jim Cahill
- 7 Nov 2019
DeltaV Blog: Migrating Legacy Control Systems and PLCs with FlexConnect Solutions

Scott Ross Now, with these control systems being more than 30+ years old, most of these legacy systems have been placed in to end of life or retired lifecycle status which means no further factory support is available. I caught up with Emerson’s Scott Ross about the choices that must be considered moving forward. Manufacturers and producers face options whether to modernize to a newer family of distributed control...
Jim Cahill
- 31 Oct 2019
DeltaV Blog: Migrating Legacy PLC-5s to DeltaV

Way back in the mid-1980’s, when I was a newly-minted engineer working oil & gas production projects offshore in the Gulf of Mexico, a new series of PLCs came on the scene to replace the Allen-Bradley PLC-2’s we had been using. They were the PLC-5 series. Javier DeLuna Now, more than 30 years old, the CPUs used in these PLCs were placed into end of life status which meant no further factory support for the CPUs as...
Jim Cahill
- 23 Oct 2019
Safety Instrumented Systems Blog: Approaches to Partial Stroke Testing Safety Valves

The safety valve within a safety instrumented function (SIF) must be tested regularly to help assure proper operation in the event of a safety demand. Operators usually perform an offline full stroke test during a scheduled shutdown because of the impact of this test on the process. But when a SIF (a.k.a. safety loop) requires more frequent testing, users can perform a partial stroke test (PST) , per the global IEC 61511...
Jim Cahill
- 23 Oct 2019
Safety Instrumented Systems Blog: Approaches to Partial Stroke Testing Safety Valves

The safety valve within a safety instrumented function (SIF) must be tested regularly to help assure proper operation in the event of a safety demand. Operators usually perform an offline full stroke test during a scheduled shutdown because of the impact of this test on the process. But when a SIF (a.k.a. safety loop) requires more frequent testing, users can perform a partial stroke test (PST) , per the global IEC 61511...
Jim Cahill
- 25 Sep 2019
Safety Instrumented Systems Blog: Safety Instrumented System Cybersecurity Best Practices

Emerson’s Sergio Diaz and Alexandre Peixoto presented Best Practices for a Cybersecure SIS at the 2019 Emerson Exchange conference. Sergio opened that the goal of this presentation is to provide practical information to maintain a more defendable security posture for safety instrumented systems (SISs) . Like control systems, defense in depth is an important concept for an SIS. It starts at plant level security, work...
Jim Cahill
- 30 Aug 2019
DeltaV Blog: Security for Safety System Logic Solvers-Physical Key Switches and Software Locks

Sergio Diaz Author: Sergio Diaz As a product marketing manager for DeltaV safety instrumented systems (SIS) , I have been asked a few times why the key switch on the CHARMs Smart Logic Solver (CSLS) does not control the lock state as is common with many safety controllers. DeltaV CHARMs Smart Logic Solver (CSLS) The next question is, “Why does the user still need to lock the CSLS via software?” The reason is...
Jim Cahill
- 30 Aug 2019
Safety Instrumented Systems Blog: Security for Safety System Logic Solvers-Physical Key Switches and Software Locks

Sergio Diaz Author: Sergio Diaz As a product marketing manager for DeltaV safety instrumented systems (SIS) , I have been asked a few times why the key switch on the CHARMs Smart Logic Solver (CSLS) does not control the lock state as is common with many safety controllers. DeltaV CHARMs Smart Logic Solver (CSLS) The next question is, “Why does the user still need to lock the CSLS via software?” The reason is...
Jim Cahill
- 23 Aug 2019
DeltaV Blog: Dynamic Simulations Create Value across Lifecycle

Simulations can add value across the lifecycle of a manufacturing or production process—from the upfront design work for the capital project portion of the lifecycle to the ongoing operations and maintenance. In a Processing magazine article, Using Life Cycle Dynamic Simulation to Drive Projects And Performance , Emerson’s Sean Sullivan teamed with a third-party consultant working at chemical manufacturing facility...
Jim Cahill
- 6 Aug 2019
Ovation Blog: Ovation Advanced Condition Monitoring

Jason King Emerson’s Jason King shares an update on advanced condition monitoring in the Ovation distributed control system at last week’s 2019 Ovation Users’ Group conference. This integrated machinery protection and condition monitoring module built directly into the Ovation system. It is capable of typical equipment protection functions, but also has condition monitoring technology built in, so no separate software...
Jim Cahill
- 6 Aug 2019
Ovation Blog: Ovation Advanced Condition Monitoring

Jason King Emerson’s Jason King shares an update on advanced condition monitoring in the Ovation distributed control system at last week’s 2019 Ovation Users’ Group conference. This integrated machinery protection and condition monitoring module built directly into the Ovation system. It is capable of typical equipment protection functions, but also has condition monitoring technology built in, so no separate software...
Jim Cahill
- 1 Aug 2019
Ovation Blog: Ovation Intelligence Framework

Alvin Faustino Azime Can-Cimino Emerson’s Alvin Faustino and Azime Can-Cimino discussed plant prognostics with the Ovation Intelligence Framework at the 2019 Ovation Users’ Group conference. Here’s a visual of the framework: Azime opened explaining that prognostic maintenance requires starting with data—sensor data and generated data. This data is pre-processed and used to develop a detection or prediction...
Jim Cahill
- 1 Aug 2019
Ovation Blog: Electrical Generator Excitation Control

Emerson’s Matt Musko shared the basics and installation best practices for generator excitation controls at the 2019 Ovation Users’ Group conference. Matt opened describing the fundamentals of generator excitation. Three things are necessary to generate electricity: current carrying conductors in the generator armature windings, a magnetic field created by DC current supplied to the field windings, and relative motion...
Jim Cahill
- 1 Aug 2019
Ovation Blog: Ovation System Forward View

Rick Kephart rounds out the 2019 Ovation Users’ Group conference with a look into the future around architectures and algorithms. Rick opened with a discussion of Ovation Droplets. It is a lightweight controller that’s part of the 3.7 release. Any Compact Controller can be configured as a Droplet in the Dev Studio configuration software. These compact controllers, configured as standalone, can be adopted as Droplets...
Jim Cahill
- 31 Jul 2019
Ovation Blog: Suppressing Plant Alarms

Ben Poskie Since the early days of distributed control systems, much work has been done to improve alarm management and prevent alarms from flooding operators to prevent them from properly diagnosing and correcting abnormal situations. The ANSI/ISA 18.2 alarm management standard began development back in 2003 and built off of the work of other alarm management initiatives. It published as ANSI/ISA-18.2-2009 Management...