Control System World

Technip was been awarded two contracts, worth a total value of about €50 million, for the front-end engineering design (FEED) services of two refineries in Kazakhstan.

These awards consist of the modernization of two out of the three existing refineries in the country:

• the first contract, for Pavlodar Oil Chemistry Refinery, is an upgrading project of the Pavlodar refinery, which is scheduled to be completed in the second semester of 2013,
• the second one, for Petrokazakhstan Oil Product, concerns the revamp of the Shymkent refinery, whose FEED documentation is scheduled to be completed by the end of 2013.

The scope of both projects includes new and revamp process units as well as utilities and offsite facilities aiming to increase production capacity and conversion.

Technip’s operating center in Rome, Italy will execute both contracts.

The Drives & Motion Division of Yaskawa America Inc. (YAI) is pleased to announce that it has acquired the business and operations of Wermac Electric Ltd. in Calgary, AB, Canada.

Wermac is a 25-year partner with Yaskawa and has been an innovator and leader in applying Variable Speed Drives and Electrical Controls in the Oil & Gas industry. Wermac has grown in size and reputation over the years by providing unique software and packaging solutions centered on Yaskawa Drives as well as knowledgeable and quick on-site service exceeding the demands of the Oil & Gas industry.

The acquisition of Wermac continues Yaskawa’s growth in key vertical markets. The Oil & Gas market in particular presents extreme requirements for quality, packaging, and special software, in which both Yaskawa and Wermac have excelled.

Mike Knapek, President and COO of Yaskawa America, Motion and Drives Division stated, “After 25 years of very successful partnership with Wermac, the time was right to take that partnership to its logical conclusion and become one company. This will allow for better service for our joint customers with greater resources located locally.”

The new division will be known as Yaskawa Wermac and will be located at the former Wermac Electric facility in Calgary, AB. Yaskawa Wermac is now a division of Yaskawa Motoman Canada, which is a subsidiary of Yaskawa America, Inc. All key personnel have been retained to continue providing the key service and products that Wermac is noted for.

“We are excited to be joining a global company with an elite reputation for technology and innovation,” said Jim MacKinnon, president of Wermac. “The existing management team, sales team, and production team will make a noticeable contribution to Yaskawa’ s growth and our line of industry solutions, while expanding Yaskawa’ s current offerings in the energy industry.” Mr. MacKinnon will take on the role of Director of Oilfield Operations for Yaskawa Wermac.

The Siemens Industry Automation Division has announced the expansion of its industry software portfolio with the acquisition of VRcontext International S.A., Brussels, Belgium. The announcement was made today at the Digital Plant Congress in Würzburg, Germany. With its Walkinside product family, VRcontext is one of the leading developers of 3D visualization and training software for displaying complex engineering data in the shipbuilding and plant construction industries. This acquisition will help Siemens to further strengthen its established position in the industrial software market. The parties agreed not to disclosed details of the purchase price.

VRcontext International S.A. was founded in the year 2000 and is represented around the world by numerous strategic partners, dealer networks and a branch office in Houston, Texas, USA. Walkinside 3D visualization software is currently in use in plant operation, maintenance and servicing in more than 200 companies in over 30 countries. Whatever the system used, the software directly accesses all plant information to display the current status of a plant in visually appealing, realistic 3D graphics. VRcontext has specialized particularly in remote offshore installations for the oil and gas industry. With Walkinside, the company has created a globally accepted standard for 3D visualization in the process industry. "The integration of the Walkinside 3D visualization and training software of our long-standing partner VRcontext into our industrial software portfolio will benefit our customers significantly. Using intelligent 3D models can make plant engineering and operation safer and more efficient in a great many sectors of industry," said Eckard Eberle, CEO of the Siemens Industrial Automation Systems Business Unit, to which VRcontext will be assigned.

The Siemens Industry Automation Division has now acquired a number of software companies and, in so doing, has consolidated its leading position in the industrial software market. All the firms concerned are leading suppliers in their respective segment: namely, UGS (USA, 2007), Innotec (Germany, 2008), Elan Software Systems (France, 2009), Active Tecnologia em Sistemas de Automação (Brazil, 2011), Vistagy (USA, 2011), IBS AG (Germany, 2012) and Perfect Costing Solutions GmbH (Germany, 2012).

Advantech, an industrial platform computing and automation company, has won the 2012 Taiwan Top 20 Global Brand Award with a brand value of USD $260 million, an 8% brand value growth compared to the previous year. The survey is organized annually by the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA) and co-organized by BusinessNext and Interbrand since 2003. During these years, Advantech has continued promoting the Advantech brand globally and has continuously been in the top 20. Advantech ranked 10th in the Taiwan Top 20 Global Brand Award in 2004, 2008, 2011.

In 2010 Advantech adopted “Enabling an Intelligent Planet” as its corporate vision and started to actively evolve and transform its organization and marketing to achieve steady expansion and realize its global brand strategy. Advantech wishes to work with other Taiwan global brands to raise awareness worldwide.

Reinforcing its leadership in advanced communications for automation and further proving the company's industrial automation insight, Kepware Technologies today joined forces with DST Controls to better forecast and manage energy demand for a well-known, Salt Lake City e-commerce data center. Responding to requests from the data center's power supplier, DST and Kepware set out to better automate the energy usage management process. View the complete DST case study.

DST Controls is a full-service control systems and industrial data integration company that services customers on five continents. The company's core offering is automated control and monitoring of industrial equipment, processes, and data. When their customer, a Salt Lake City e-commerce provider, needed help addressing energy requirements — they turned to Kepware for help.

"Our e-commerce customer was called on by Rocky Mountain Power to provide more accurate information on energy usage. This was critical as the utility is required to balance load and supply power in real-time," said Greg Dumas, DST Chief Technology Officer. "Monitoring is essential as even a few minutes of warning of demand changes make significant differences in power reliability and cost."

Comprised of 300,000 square feet, the e-commerce data center is staffed by 50 people with 8,000 computers that process web-based orders and shipping information. In the past, collection of data was a very timely process. Dumas said that this type of information is normally very difficult to provide and a highly manual process, "Many customers and utilities manage demand and supply by dispatching their engineers to spend hours creating spreadsheets and calling each other with their latest out-of-date forecasts."

The answer was found via Kepware and its award-winning KEPServerEX®. The KEPServerEX is designed to connect disparate devices — from plant control systems to enterprise information systems. The tool has proven interoperability through drivers and client connectivity for isolated automation systems. KEPServerEX brings centralized communications through a single communications platform, while providing plug-and-play drivers and client interfaces to enable on-demand scalability.

With the integrated solution, data is exchanged using OSIsoft and Kepware — with more than 106 million transactions taking place every day. The Kepware solution monitors approximately 2,000 I/O points; DST reads all servers' power and stores it in a database where Kepware pulls this information from the drivers.

MILWAUKEE, Sept. 24, 2012 — Two new product suppliers in the Americas region have joined the Rockwell Automation Encompass third-party product referencing program, while four new partners have joined the Rockwell Automation OEM Partner program. In addition, two new system integrators have joined the Solution Partner program.

Encompass Partner Program

The following are additional details about the new Encompass Partner program members in the Americas region:

• eRPortal Software Group, LLC – provides asset, materials, and maintenance management software that helps companies better manage their assets. Their flexible, easy-to-use, Computerized Maintenance Management System (CMMS) optimizes maintenance processes and integrates with systems throughout an organization.

• Schweitzer Engineering Laboratories Inc. – makes electric power safer, more reliable and more economical through the design, manufacture, and support of products used in the protection, monitoring, control, automation and metering of electric power systems.

OEM Partner Program

New OEM Program members are as follows:

• Automatic Handling International builds high quality, innovative roll handling and packaging systems with a focus on pulp and paper, converting, tissue and nonwovens applications.
• Bastian Solutions offers a variety of material handling and controls solutions, varying in complexity from simple, manual to highly automated systems such as mobile robots, automated storage and retrieval systems (ASRS), automated guided vehicle (AGV) systems, RFID, sortation, carousels and conveyor systems.
• BMH Robotics is an independent robotics integrator that provides conventional material-handling machines and custom-engineered solutions.
• IPG Photonics develops and manufactures high-performance fiber lasers and amplifiers for diverse applications including materials processing, communications, medical and advanced applications.

Solution Partner Program

The new members of the Solution Partner program are as follows:

• Prime Controls is a system integrator and I&C construction firm specifically structured to meet industrial automation and control needs with a focus on critical infrastructure applications.
• Innovative Control Solutions is a full-service control systems integration firm who has in-depth experiences applying process safety applications into pulp and paper, oil and gas, utility power, industrial energy, mining and petrochemical industries.

Water level in the boiler drum is one of the most important parameters to both measure and control. If the level is too low, overheating of the water wall tubes may cause serious accidents, resulting in expensive repairs, downtime, and injury or death to personnel. If the level is too high, boiler water carryover into the superheater or the turbine may cause damage resulting in extensive maintenance costs or outages of either the turbine or boiler. Controlling the water level requires sophisticated techniques as the level measurement must be accurate and transmitted to the control system.

Click 'Struggling getting reliable and continuous level signal in the steam drum?' to continue reading

USA: Power Plant Cycling Conference + accompanying Crack Assessment and GT Courses

European Technology Development – an international company with worldwide consulting business in power plant operation, maintenance, materials, condition and integrity/ life assessment, weld repairs, benchmarking etc. and specialist expertise in plant cyclic operation and costs analysis – is pleased to announce that it is organising its 3rd International Conf. on “POWER PLANT/ CCGT/ HRSG CYCLIC OPEARTION – Technical and Cost Issues”: 28-30 November 2012, Charlotte, North Carolina, USA. This is perhaps going to be one of the finest gatherings of its kind bringing together plant operators, designers, manufacturers, service providers and researchers from USA, Canada, UK, Japan, Europe, Asia and elsewhere on one single platform. They will be focussing on the all important issue of damage involved in plant cyclic operation and costs associated with it. With the increasing penetration from renewable energies like solar, hydro and wind, cyclic operation of the conventional and CCGT/HRSG plant will be further enhanced. The effect will be even more severe on older less efficient plant, designed for base load operation, as they are used more and more for peak load power supply. The conference Program and Registration Form can be accessed at

Conference Details