Over the last 10 years I have worked with a number of technologists from the process industry on various aspects of control using wireless field devices. Much of this work is summarized in the book Wireless Control Foundation – Continuous and Discrete Control for the Process Industry. Recently Mark Nixon (Emerson) and Willy Wojsznis (Emerson), Professors Deji Chen (Tongji University) and Song Han (University of Connecticut) co-authored a paper titled Process Control over Real-Time Wireless Sensor and Actuator Networks . This paper addresses some recent work e have done to address control using wireless throttling valves in control. The paper was submitted and accepted for publication by The 12th IEEE International Conference on Embedded Software and Systems, ICESS 2015. On August 25th, 2015 I presented this paper at the conference. As noted in the opening presentation shown below, technologists from 28 countries attended this conference.
In my presentation I provided an overview of wireless field devices as used in the process industry. Also, I address how PIDPlus has enabled a wide variety of control applications to be addressed using wireless transmitters. However, most of the presentation focused on the on-going development of wireless throttling valves and the technical challenges and solutions for using wireless throttling valves in closed loop control. Also, I presented field test results that have been achieved using a prototype wireless throttling valve with PIDPlus and wireless measurements. After the conference I turned this presentation into a YouTube video, you can view that below.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8L8KIv9eX_c
Later this year we are targeting to test a beta version of the wireless throttling valve adaptor that is being developed by Fisher Controls and Rosemount. Thus, I full expect that in the near futures closed loop control may be implemented using a wireless transmitter and a wireless throttling valve. For new applications in upstream oil and gas product and some other industry segments this new capability may be used to dramatically reduce installation costs.