Control System World

Rotork CMA electric control valve actuators have delivered an efficient and reliable process control solution and eliminated venting and greenhouse gas emissions in compliance with new environmental protection legislation at remotely sited shale gas installations in the USA.

Traditionally, spring diaphragm actuators powered by the produced gas have been used, but recent EPA (US Government Environmental Protection Agency) mandates now limit this process to lower fugitive emissions caused by bleed gas. A shale gas company in Louisiana was therefore looking for an affordable and efficient low power solution that could be run by solar panels to replace existing actuation equipment and control a variety of fluids at line pressures up to 413 bar (6000 psig).

Most shale wells and flow lines are unmanned and located in remote areas that are difficult and expensive to monitor. Skilled technicians must check data and perform manual shutdowns, increasing costs for the time to travel to site, identifying the problem and stopping the flow, which is not cost-effective or practical. Actuators provide an ideal solution to automate valves at the remote wells.

The key objective was to provide an efficient and reliable process control actuator which could be retrofitted on installed valves to reduce costs and downtime. Rotork’s local agent Setpoint Integrated Solutions engineered an interface to enable CML-250 actuators to be easily fitted to installed valves and improve the level of control, without venting gas and with the low power demand required for solar powered operation.

Designed for quarter-turn, multi-turn and linear valve operation, robust Rotork CMA actuators perform numerous process control valve, choke valve, metering pump and damper applications demanding precise position control and continuous modulation. Single-phase or DC electrical power is all that is required for simplified installation and control valve actuation. Explosionproof certification to international standards is available for hazardous area applications. Recent developments enable the CMA to be specified with increased functionality encompassing local controls, LCD positional display and programmable fail-to-position performance.

Schneider Electric, the global specialist in energy management and automation, has today announced a partnership with worldwide leader in networking, Cisco, to bring advanced networking and control system technologies to its customers. Cisco is focused on helping transform industrial customers by connecting people, processes, data and things. Schneider Electric will leverage the proven technologies from Cisco to help deliver its enhanced industrial automation solutions.

Welcoming Cisco to the Schneider Electric Collaborative Automation Partner Program (CAPP) provides the platform needed to offer the company’s state-of-the-art industrial networking technology to Schneider Electric customers in more than 200 countries. Schneider Electric and Cisco both share the philosophy of driving technological solutions to address specific customer challenges, and both companies welcome the benefits of this partnership.

The superior value delivered to common industrial customers by this partnership can be demonstrated in a recent customer case. A major metallurgical coal miner located in the Bowen Basin in Queensland, Australia, selected Schneider Electric to supply an advanced technology solution for a new operation that produces metallurgical coal for the steel industry. Commissioned in late 2014, and constructed to be one of the most productive, sustainable and highly performing metallurgical coal mines in the world, the company’s operation relies on a substantial foundation of technologies from Cisco and Schneider Electric – control of the fixed plant is entrusted to Schneider Electric systems, while the process control network depends on proven technologies from Cisco.

The Schneider Electric CAPProgram Deployment Director, Loic Regnier, said “Superlative technology partner companies like Cisco, recognized in the industry by analysts and customers alike, bring advanced capabilities to our customers and contribute to helping us build complete and robust solutions for those customers.”

Many Schneider Electric customers already use Cisco technology. In fact, some IT departments require the implementation of Cisco technology as a standard across the enterprise, including the industrial network. Companies who rely on Cisco for industrial network connectivity can achieve network resiliency using Cisco technologies including rapid ring recovery, link redundancy, link aggregation and rapid failover.

“Complementing our advanced core offer with best-in-class partners like Cisco is the next step in our commitment to helping our customers operate high performance networks and systems,” said Fabrice Jadot, Senior Vice President, Innovation & Technology and CTO, Industry Business, Schneider Electric.

“Cisco is pleased to join the Schneider Electric Collaborative Automation Partner Program to develop and validate joint industrial solutions for our customers,” said Sébastien Collignon, Business Development Director, Industry Solutions Group, EMEAR, Cisco. “The program will enable us to help customers in a variety of industries minimize risk and reduce implementation time at operational sites, thereby improving business value.”

Rotork UK has announced the opening of a new Service Centre in Glasgow to provide enhanced, faster and more economical support for its flow control products in Scotland.

During nearly 60 years of serving Scottish industries, tens of thousands of Rotork actuators and associated products have been installed in market sectors including conventional and nuclear power generation, oil & gas, water treatment, food and beverages. The Scottish Service Centre will strengthen both the scope and level of support available for products in the field, complementing and building on the benefits of Rotork’s Client Support Programme, which enables users to select a level of service precisely tailored for their individual requirements.

Customers can choose from the comprehensive range of service products provided by Rotork Site Services. Health checks enable customers to prioritise maintenance and replacement planning whilst preventative maintenance enhances the integrity of actuators to maximise plant utilisation. Emergency and planned service encompasses installation, commissioning, upgrading, installation of control systems, troubleshooting and repair of damaged or deteriorating assets. Actuator overhauls, performed in the Glasgow workshop, will bring long service units back to guaranteed ‘as new’ condition, whilst the provision of loan actuators to cover workshop overhauls and repairs - a Rotork innovation - has proved to save significant downtime costs.

Rotork Site Services has a wealth of experience in retrofitting new actuators to valves, penstocks and dampers installed on existing plant, as well as the factory assembly of new valves and actuators for plant upgrades and extensions. Capabilities for extended scope projects include surveys, design, procurement, manufacturing and commissioning to cover the broad scope of activities surrounding actuation projects.

These activities are all performed by a fully qualified specialist workforce and supported by large spares stockholdings held at Glasgow and the recently expanded Rotork UK head office and workshop in Leeds.

Ian Elliott, Rotork UK Site Services Sales Manager, explains: “Our mission in Scotland as elsewhere is to enable clients to concentrate on their core businesses and increase production by providing maximum reliability and availability of our products by reducing the cost of ownership and year-on-year maintenance risks.”

Kepware Technologies, a software development company focused on communications for automation, has recently announced the release of KEPServerEX version 5.18. Key enhancements offer additional device connectivity and an improved user experience for customers in multiple vertical industries, including Manufacturing, Oil & Gas, and Power & Utilities.

"Our latest product release is an excellent example of the importance Kepware places on customer feedback," said Tony Paine, CEO, Kepware. "Our commitment to addressing customers' needs prompted important usability and feature enhancements—including real-time tag edits and expanded support for ABB's measurement and monitoring technologies."

KEPServerEX version 5.18 includes the following key updates:

1. The Media Level Redundancy plug-in now supports a user-configurable triggering mechanism that can initiate failover based on single point value change, quality change, or rate of change. This capability was added to support high-reliability tunneling with Kepware's OPC UA-based tunneling solution.

2. The KEPServerEX platform now allows changes to be made to tag definitions in real-time. These changes apply to existing and new clients, and ensure the integrity of all connected clients.

3. The ABB Totalflow driver now supports liquid Electronic Flow Measurement (EFM) data collection. It also has the ability to retrieve Trend Log files from Totalflow devices (which log real-time data points like flow rates, pressures, and temperatures) and make them available via CSV files.

"ABB Totalflow remote measurement and automation systems are proven to dramatically increase the accuracy, efficiency, safety, and productivity of oil and gas facilities," said Scott Peterson, US Sales Manager, ABB. "In a market where accurate measurement and efficient operations are critical, ABB can significantly benefit from the support of a leading communications provider like Kepware. Kepware's ongoing enhancements to their ABB Totalflow driver enable customers to leverage and integrate the full feature set of Totalflow systems with diverse applications and architectures, effectively increasing the measurement and data analysis capabilities of our solutions."

KEPServerEX version 5.18 also features updates to 32 products, including significant enhancements to the OPC UA Client driver, Advanced Tags plug-in, and Scheduler plug-in. It includes new Fisher ROC and ROC Plus Ethernet drivers for the Fisher ROC Suite, along with additional OpCode support in all ROC Suite drivers. Kepware also recently released ClientAce version 4.0.2.7, a .NET developer toolkit that enables applications programmers to design custom OPC clients.

In this paper, Moxa examine existing substation topologies and possible integral and scalable methods to achieve efficient redundancy with PRP (parallel redundancy protocol) and HSR (high-availability seamless redundancy). An optimized IEC 61850 PRP/HSR architecture should provide scalable integration for easy modification of functionalities and extension of the substation. Upgrading SANs (single attached nodes) and DANs (dual attached nodes) to a PRP/HSR network will require an efficient and cost effective solution in order to construct a seamless/bumpless communication infrastructure to ensure maximum system availability.

Some of the first power substations in the 1920’s were simple adaptations of devices used for monitoring and control of electrical systems. In today’s complex substation automation  industry, network and system reliability is paramount in ensuring onsite safety and consumer quality of service. One solution to ensure highly - reliable system communication is to implement network redundancy without the impact from a single point of failure. In this article, we will examine existing substation topologies and possible integral and scalable methods to achieve efficient redundancy with PRP (parallel redundancy protocol) and HSR (high - availability seamless redundancy).

With IEC 61850-compliant devices specifically calibrated for PRP and HSR redundancy, seamless control and monitoring can be achieved by using a cost-effective hybrid network topology.

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The branch of the largest professional education complex in Latin America, Servico Nacional de Aprendizagem Industrial (SENAI), in Portuguese language for National Service for Industrial Training, provides students with a unique opportunity of learning and gaining practical experience on an actual process with their Yokogawa instrumented micro plants. "Yokogawa is not just providing the products, but also providing all the necessary training and knowledge", said, Mr. Jean Barbosa Cavalcante, the leader of CIITEC, Centro de Inspiracao e Inovacao Tecnologica in Portuguese for Technical Innovation and Inspiration Center from SENAI-AL.

SENAI, a non-profit educational institution in Brazil, provides the research, training, and education for engineers in various industrial areas such as sugar based energy, oil and gas, automobile, and more. Funded in the 1940s by National Confederation of Industry Systems (CNI) and Federation of Industries of the States, it is now the largest professional education complex in Latin America supporting 28 industrial areas and offering approximately 3,000 courses.

SENAI-Al, a branch of SENAI located in capital city Maceio in Alagoas state, provides the research, calibration and inspection work to Alagoas industry. Through those services, SENAI-AL manufactures scaled down versions of actual plants - called micro plants. Thanks to micro plant, students can experience an actual process in the same way they would in a real plant. For students, this is a practical and effective way to augment learning because they "see and feel" the actual process, which is something they cannot experience by using process simulation alone. The first micro plant is an Ethanol distillery plant, which is one of main industries in Maceio.

Since 2008, Yokogawa America do Sul Ltda has worked together with SENAI-AL for instrumentation of micro plants by providing not just the Yokogawa’s transmitters, flow meters, and PLCs, but also helping them in training. SENAI-AL now delivers micro plants to other universities and research institutes all over Brazil for the purpose of education and research. With the ethanol distillery micro plants, students are learning hands-on temperature, pressure, level and flow measurement as well as feedback control.

SENAI-AL selected Yokogawa to provide the training kits because of the long-term stability and low maintenance requirements of its instruments as well as for Yokogawa’s ability to provide basic process knowledge training, and additional digital technologies. In addition, Yokogawa provides consistent service from field instruments to system with SENAI-AL. The micro plants are contributing to increase the number and competency level of IA engineers all over Brazil.

Yokogawa Electric Corporation announces the July 2 release of version R3.20 of its Plant Resource Manager (PRM) software tool for the centralized management of large amounts of data from plant monitoring and control devices and manufacturing equipment. PRM R3.20 is an upgrade to R3.12 and includes an improved management function for HART and ISA100 Wireless™ field devices. With this new PRM version, Yokogawa aims to capture a larger share of the plant maintenance market.

Development Background:  Manufacturers are constantly looking for ways to improve maintenance efficiency by using software tools like PRM that can centrally manage large amounts of maintenance and other types of data from plant monitoring and control devices and manufacturing equipment. Maintenance personnel use such data to reduce plant downtime and enhance safety by proactively spotting and responding to device failures.  To optimize plant operations, it is essential not only to keep devices in good working order but also to have up-to-date information on device status and maintain records on all maintenance work that is performed. Such information is most useful if operators can view it on screen at their control system human interface stations.  With such needs in mind, Yokogawa has developed new functions for its PRM tool that facilitate the collection of information from field devices for use in optimizing device maintenance and plant operations.

1. Quick access to HART device status information

2. Various management functions for field wireless devices

3. Complying with FDT2.0, the latest FDT standard

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Honeywell Process Solutions (HPS) recently announced that its automation and security systems will help Freeport LNG Development, L.P. (Freeport LNG) expand its southeast Texas liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminal into a world-class liquefaction and export operation.

This expansion will give Freeport LNG 13.9 million tons a year of export capacity. Startup is expected in 2018. Freeport LNG's is one of 10 new or expanded import or export LNG terminals that have been approved by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. HPS will be the integrated main automation contractor (I-MAC) for the expansion project. In this role, HPS will be responsible for designing, delivering and installing the automation, instrumentation, controls, and safety and security systems. The unified approach will be critical in helping the project meet operational and business readiness goals on day-one of startup.

"The expanded I-MAC capabilities that Honeywell brings to this project – and specifically our new LEAP™ project services – will help Freeport LNG start up this terminal expansion faster and within budget," said Pieter Krynauw, vice president for HPS's Projects and Automation Solutions business. "Honeywell's latest technologies, project delivery capabilities and expert services will create a highly integrated infrastructure to boost the plant's profitability."

The terminal, located on Quintana Island near Freeport, Texas, will build three new processing units, or trains, as part of a more than $13 billion expansion, adding gas pretreatment and liquefaction capabilities. Honeywell will supply its automation and control expertise and a unique approach to project consulting and execution to support Freeport LNG's move to exporting LNG in the wake of newly-exploited domestic natural gas resources.

"Such a significant expansion of our business requires us to leverage our strategic partners to ensure we develop the safest, most efficient world-class asset," said Michael Smith, chairman and chief executive officer of Freeport LNG.

Honeywell will go beyond the traditional main automation contractor role to include a broader scope of products, services, and consulting capabilities that add value over the entire project and operating lifecycle of the venture. Specific key deliverables include a number of Honeywell's innovative and patented technologies including LEAP, Honeywell's lean project execution services, Experion® PKS Orion with Distributed Systems Architecture (DSA), Experion Security Integrator, Fault Tolerant Ethernet (FTE), Universal process and safety I/O, virtualization, advanced control, Safety Manager, Fire and gas systems, OneWireless™ Network, Digital Video Manager™ (DVM), UniSim operator training simulator, advanced alarm management software, and PHD data historian.

By leveraging these integrated solutions, Honeywell will reduce risks and minimize potential schedule delays for both Freeport LNG and its engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) contractor during the facility expansion's startup. Honeywell has partnered with principals at Freeport LNG for almost a decade to drive supply chain optimization aimed at achieving production and cargo deliveries that meet or exceed Freeport LNG's Annual Delivery Plan.