Articles and News

Through the donations of Endress+Hauser, Rockwell Automation and TriNova, Polk State College will be the new home to a $1 million, state-of-the-art PTU (Process Training Unit).

By Bill Lydon, Editor With this acquisition, Schneider Electric significantly enhanced its position to serve the process industries and now has a complete portfolio of products to serve the entire industrial and process automation industry. This article highlights a few key aspects of the integration of the two companies.

By Bill Lydon, Editor The huge installed base of automation software running on Windows XP will be vulnerable to cyber-attacks with the end of Windows XP support April 8, 2014. More than 12 years old, Windows XP is the longest supported version of Windows ever and therefore is the most used in industrial automation systems.

Flowserve will supply pumps and an energy recovery system (ERS) for the seawater reverse osmosis (SWRO) desalination plant located near Antofagasta, Chile.

Yokogawa will supply the control system for the SWRO-4 Desalination Plant, which is being built in Jubail, Saudi Arabia by the Power & Water Utility Company for Jubail and Yanbu (Marafiq).

By Bill Lydon, Editor I recently had the opportunity to discuss Ocean Data Systems – a little company you likely have never heard of - with Roy Kok, their VP of Sales and Marketing. Their product, Dream Report, is OEMed by a number of well-known software providers. Here is a synopsis of my interview with Kok.

By Bill Lydon, Editor Major General Robert E. Wheeler gave a compelling and informative keynote presentation on cyber security at the ISA Automation Week conference in Nashville, TN on November 6, 2013. The cyber security challenges faced by the military and industrial automation systems are strikingly similar.

By Bill Lydon, Editor Emerson’s Sonnenberg and Zornio discussed pervasive sensing as a growing trend. They framed the discussion around the idea of pervasive sensing as the way to achieve the pursuit of actionable information to improve operations and maintenance.

By Bill Lydon, Editor Foxboro has dramatically stepped up the power of their controller with the Foxboro Evo process automation system introduction. This controller is a great example of the new breed of controllers that leverages the latest technology.

In this video case study, Carl Steffen, Engineering Services Manager at VRTX Technologies, San Antonio, TX, explains how they use Netbiter to remotely monitor their water treatment systems.

Free chlorine monitors from Analytical Technology overcome the traditional issues associated with buffered amperometric monitors, such as manhandling 25 litre containers of buffer around sites.

By Paul Hodge & Joe Bastone, Honeywell The advantages of optimized project workflow can be realized at both ends of the project schedule. The benefits are essential to ensuring control systems pose the least risk to project schedule and allow for safe, efficient and reliable plant startup and operation.

The symposium will be held 5-7 August 2014 and covers how instrumentation, SCADA and automatic control are vital to the treatment and distribution of water and wastewater.

The transportation and water and waste water industry sectors have both experienced large increases in the number of reported cybersecurity incidents in recent years, up 160% and 60% respectively.

Yokogawa will supply a SCADA monitoring system for a large water distribution pipeline that the Saline Water Conversion Corporation is building in Saudi Arabia between the cities of Yanbu and Medina.

Enardo offers safety and environmental control equipment for the oil and gas, petrochemical, wastewater, refining and other industries.

By Bill Lydon, Editor The ability to improve manufacturing operations is growing with the application of software that can leverage lower cost computing. More than 30 years ago, ULTRAMAX Corporation commercialized an interesting software product to optimize the operating performance of industrial processes. I recently caught up with the Founder and CEO to learn more about the product and their philosophy and perspective of industrial process optimization.

Endress+Hauser invests 40 million dollars in new plants in expanding its plants for flow, level and pressure measurement engineering in Greenwood, Indiana.

PCT Engineered Systems' (PCT) cooling capacity needed to be increased dramatically to meet business demands and the company was able to quickly and efficiently meet this challenge using Siemens controllers and drives.

Emerson will automate equipment and processes for two environmental projects at DC Water’s Blue Plains Advanced Wastewater Treatment Plant in Washington, D.C.