Activity

  • Value from Monitoring Control Valves

    Jim Cahill
    As staff in process manufacturing and production facilities shrink due to economic or demographic conditions, on-site engineers, operations and maintenance personnel must increase their breadth of skills at the expense of skill depth. In a recent post, Monitoring Control Valves with Remote Expertise , we described how remote expertise could help augment local staff in the area of valve monitoring and maintenance. …

  • Online Pressure Regulator CAD Drawing Resource

    Jim Cahill
    For process manufacturers and producers, regulating pressure throughout the process is important for safety, efficiency and reliability. We’ve highlighted the important role of pressure regulators in numerous posts . During the front end engineering design phase of a project, having good CAD ( computer-aided design ) drawings are important in determining the best regulator for the application given piping configurations…

  • Monitoring Control Valves with Remote Expertise

    Jim Cahill
    An ARC Advisory group study highlighted that “The global process industry loses $20 billion, or five percent of annual production, due to unscheduled downtime and poor quality. ARC estimates that almost 80 percent of these losses are preventable…” Key components in controlling a process are the control valves, which directly touch the process. As such, they can be subject to corrosive, erosive and other challenging…

  • Control Valve and Control Performance at Instrumentation Symposium

    Jim Cahill
    Instrumentation and automation professionals in the oil & gas industries along the Texas Gulf Coast have an excellent resource in the annual Instrumentation and Automation Symposium for the Process Industry . The 71 st edition of this 3-day symposium will be held January 26-28 at Texas A&M University in College Station, Texas. If you’re going, make sure to attend some of Emerson’s James Beall ‘s presentations and workshops…

  • Separate versus Integral Final Element Accessories Questions

    Jim Cahill
    A post from a few years ago, Separate Versus Integral Final Element Accessories in Safety Applications , continues to generate some good questions. I thought I’d make these questions and associated answers more visible in today’s post. Here’s the first question: I understood the whole description, But while calculating PFDavg, We will have to add the Failure rate of valve assembly (Valve+Actuator) which brings down…

  • Positioner-Only Configuration on Digital Valve Controller

    Jim Cahill
    I wanted to share a quick question and answer in an email exchange in case you may have a similar question sometime down the road. The original question was: The Project is about installing two manual Fisher control valves but we want to modify it to include obtaining feedback positions back to the Control Room. ( ZSC/ZSO ). Can we configure the DVC6200 just for only positioning purposes only? If this is possible…

  • Application Guide for Natural Gas Pressure Regulators

    Jim Cahill
    I saw on my LinkedIn home page that my friends who manage Fisher Regulators have released the Natural Gas Technologies Application Guide – Edition VII , which is now available online in eBook format… very nice! This application guide is designed to help you quickly and easily select pressure regulator products for natural gas applications in transmission, distribution and utilization. If you don’t have great familiarity…

  • When is a Safety Integrity Level Rating of a Valve Required?

    Jim Cahill
    Control valves play a large role in process control. Emerson’s Riyaz Ali shared with me that he is often asked about their use in safety instrumented functions (also known as safety loops). When asked recently, he shared an ISA Safety Division newsletter from the fall of 2007. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find the newsletter in my Google searches. His article in this newsletter, When is a Safety Integrity Level (SIL) Rating…

  • Vibration Monitoring of Control Valves Prevents Unplanned Shutdowns

    Jim Cahill
    Emerson’s Shawn Anderson teamed with a recycled paper mill staff member and their local business partner on an Emerson Exchange presentation, Vibration Monitoring of Control Valves Prevents Unplanned Shutdowns. Here is the presentation abstract: Two control valves in this recycled cardboard paper facility had experienced vibration related failures. These failures were difficult to detect and/or predict due to the variable…

  • Metal-Seated Ball Valve Applications

    Jim Cahill
    Emerson’s Shawn Fagen , Zach Stahlin and Mark Nymeyer teamed up on an Emerson Exchange presentation, Heavy Metal – Turn up your Z500 Knowledge to Eleven! I was expecting to need earplugs but instead found out that their abstract was: This session is an introduction for the end user to the newly introduced Fisher Z500, metal-seated ball valve. The Z500 valve is a simplistic two-piece floating ball design with integral…

  • Improving Offshore Platform Waterflood System Availability

    Jim Cahill
    Emerson’s Ryan McIntosh presented, A Deepwater Oil and Gas Platform Realizes an Improvement in Availability. His abstract: A customer was having issues with maintaining control over their waterflood system due to valve failures. This application, key to optimal oil/gas production and maintaining reservoir pressure subjects the valves to an eight to as high as ten thousand psi pressure drop. The valves Fisher replaced…

  • Mounting Digital Valve Controller Howto Video

    Jim Cahill
    It has been a busy week as many of the experts around Emerson Process Management here in Austin to work on ways to improve their participation in the social channels. I wanted to share a “how to” video, Mounting a Fisher FIELDVUE DVC6200 Digital Valve Controller to a 657 Actuator . In it, Engineering/Industrial Management student and former Emerson intern James Holloway shows the process of mounting the DVC6200 instrument…

  • How-to Video on Valve Actuator Torque Calibration

    Jim Cahill
    There is nothing like a brief “how-to” video. I use these often around the home as a filter to determine if it’s something I can do myself or if I need to call out an expert. We have many examples of these in our world of process automation. Here’s one from the Emerson team managing the line of Bettis actuators. In this 4:80 YouTube video, TEC2 Model 500 Calibration with Torque Calibration Tool , Emerson’s Thomas…

  • Working Monitor Pressure Regulators in Fuel Gas Pressure Control

    Jim Cahill
    Fuel gas drives the boilers, fired heaters, generators, compressors and more in many process manufacturing and production operations. Accurately controlling fuel gas pressure is important for optimum combustion and overall energy efficiency. I received a draft of an Emerson Exchange Denver conference presentation by Dow’s Tony Dafft, Ryan Baker with Emerson local business partner, Puffer-Sweiven , and Emerson’s Michael…

  • Controlling Pressure when Testing Oil and Gas Well Bore Cement

    Jim Cahill
    For those not familiar with the oil & gas drilling process, the cement that is between the well bore and outside of the well casing is critical to the overall integrity of the well. PetroWiki defines its role : Cement is used to hold casing in place and to prevent fluid migration between subsurface formations. TESCOM ER5000 Series Electropneumatic Controller Controlling the pressure is very important in the cement…

  • Faster Subsea Hydraulic Equipment Startups

    Jim Cahill
    Offshore oil and gas producers use hydraulic power to operate much of their subsea equipment. This equipment includes valves, cylinders, motors, manifolds, blowout preventers and remote operated vehicles to name a few. Pressure regulators in Hydraulic Power Units (HPUs) help ensure the required hydraulic pressure is available for this equipment. One of the challenges in pressurizing this equipment is the time it takes…

  • Butterfly Valve for Diverse Throttling and On-Off Applications

    Jim Cahill
    References to the use of butterfly valves date back to James Watt, who : …made use of a butterfly valve in his steam engine, and the first Mercedes car built around 1901 introduced a butterfly valve in the fuel intake linked to the accelerator pedal. Wikipedia describes butterfly valves as from: …a family of valves called quarter-turn valves . In operation, the valve is fully open or closed when the disc is…

  • Integrated Oil and Gas Well Testing

    Jim Cahill
    Testing the composition of oil, gas, basic sediment and water has historically been a batch-type operation where the flow from a single well has been diverted from a header leading to the production separator over to a test separator. These components are measured in the test separator before returning for further processing. As technology has advanced to provide both subsea and topside multiphase flow metering , composition…

  • Detonation Arrestors for Unstable Detonation Conditions in Piping Systems

    Jim Cahill
    For production processes with flammable substances, flame arrestors are important safety devices that allow gases to pass through but prevent flames in order to prevent a larger fire or explosion. A recent Control Engineering Europe article, Detonation arrestors reduce complexity and increase safety , highlights considerations in detonation arrestors , which are flame arrestors designed to prevent the transmission…

  • Corrosion-Resistant Materials in Chemically-Hostile Valve Applications

    Jim Cahill
    When it comes to instrumentation and final control elements which touch the process, materials of construction are one of the critical selection criteria. In a whitepaper, PPS Outshines Stainless Steel in Chemically Hostile Valve Applications , Emerson’s Steve Attri describes how this PPS material is highly resistant to corrosion in highly-corrosive applications. He opens defining and describing PPS: Polyphenylene…

  • Shrinking the Distance between Expertise Seeker and Expert

    Jim Cahill
    My operating premise for why social networks and online communities are so important for process manufacturers and producers is the complexity of the engineering profession in these industries. Former Emerson Process Management president John Berra said it best in an Automation World column : Our work demands the broadest skill set of any engineering discipline—it requires knowledge of chemical processes, mechanical…

  • Managing Pressure and Temperature on Oil and Gas Well Pad Burners

    Jim Cahill
    In oil and gas production and transportation, managing temperature and pressure is critical for safe and efficient operations. In a whitepaper, The Significance of Reliable Pressure Control in Oilfield Burner Systems , Emerson’s Deepak Sivanandan describes the technologies critical in managing process temperatures and pressures. Deepak opens by highlighting the integral role of burners on oil & gas well pads: …

  • Control Valve Suitability in Safety Applications

    Jim Cahill
    Sometimes an email exchange turns up something developed years ago that still has great value. So is this case with an article I received as an attachment on final control elements and their suitability in safety instrumented functions (SIFs) , a.k.a. safety loops. The article, When SIL suitability is required for final control elements , was written by Emerson’s Riyaz Ali back in 2011 for EngineerIT magazine. The…

  • Complying with Storage Tank Emissions Regulations

    Jim Cahill
    If you’re an energy producer here in the United States, you likely already familiar with the Environmental Protection Agency’s “Quad O” regulations, or officially, EPA Title 40, C.F.R. Part 60, Subpart OOOO—Standards of Performance for Crude Oil and Natural Gas Production, Transmission and Distribution . The EPA defines its purpose: This subpart establishes emission standards and compliance schedules for the control…

  • Interactive Demonstration of Pressure Regulators in Action

    Jim Cahill
    Controlling the pressure levels is one of the challenges many instrumentation and automation engineers face. Pressure regulators are often used for this task, since they are self-regulating and don’t require a control loop connected to the plant distributed control system (DCS). I saw this post, Pressure Regulator Animations by Emerson’s Michael Calaway in the Emerson Exchange 365 community. He shares links to some…

This is the official online community site of the Emerson Global Users Exchange, a forum for the free exchange of non-proprietary information among the global user community of all Emerson Automation Solution's products and services. Our goal is to improve the efficiency and use of automation systems and solutions employed at members’ facilities by sharing our knowledge, experiences, and application information.

User Groups | World Areas | Community Guidelines | Legal Information | Privacy Policy | Contact Community Manager

Website translation provided by Website Translator

© 2015-2022 Emerson Global Users Exchange. All rights reserved.