Articles and News

By Bill Lydon, Editor According to a recent survey, automation users want and deserve more from an automation controller. Albert Rooyakkers, CTO of Bedrock Automation, explains why they went back to the drawing board to design and develop this new, innovative automation controller.

The ASM Consortium has been working continuously together for more than 20 years to maximize safety and performance by preventing or minimizing the impact of abnormal situations.

According to ARC, the global DCS market grew about 4 percent in 2013.

By Bill Lydon, Editor Some industrial automation vendors and computer technology providers are offering cloud services that include historians, analytics, and complete MES (Manufacturing Execution System). These services offer a new way to improve operations by applying more computing power. Another important trend is leveraging new, more powerful controllers within the secure automation system environment. Should you be using one or the other, or both?

The US chemicals market is expected to make investments of nearly $80 billion by 2020, creating strong opportunities for automation solution providers.

Heide Refinery used two weeks of planned downtime at its pyrolysis plant to migrate to new safety systems.

Products include process controllers, digital indicators, chart and strip recorders and paperless videographic recorders.

Yokogawa will supply control systems and safety instrumented systems for a waste-to-energy facility being built for SITA Cornwall Ltd. in the U.K.

Metso will provide automation, safety and emergency shutdown system extensions to the existing Metso DNA system when the polyethylene plant is upgraded.

Emerson migrated an old burner management system on a distillation column furnace to Emerson’s DeltaV during the plant’s annual scheduled shutdown this 2014.

Emerson will install an Ovation control and safety system at a 1,075-MW, ultra-supercritical, coal-fired power generating unit under construction at the Kozienice Power Station in Poland.

The 22-year-old association is seeing an uptick in participation from professionals and corporations who understand the power of Information Technologies (IT) in manufacturing.

Yokogawa will supply an integrated control and safety instrumented system solution for an ultra-low-sulfur diesel fuel plant that is being built for PEMEX Refinación, a subsidiary of PEMEX.

Proficy will assist the city in bringing together information about their wastewater system from remote locations to provide a system-wide view of what’s really happening across its watersheds.

Emerson will replace the Siemens T3000 system currently controlling the Foster-Wheeler boiler, turbine, air quality control system, and burner management system with its Ovation control technology at the Longview Power plant in Maidsville, W.Va.

By Bill Lydon, Editor The OPC Foundation Information Revolution 2014 Conference was held at Microsoft's Redmond Campus on August 4-7, 2014. The conference featured industry experts who both presented and learned more about OPC Unified Architecture. This article summarizes the highlights from the conference.

Metso will supply a DNA automation system, information management system and a safety system to the Greatmoor energy-from-waste facility under construction in Calvert, Edgcott, Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire, UK.

The Summail Gas Plant has an Integrated Control & Safety System which consists of a Process Control System, Emergency Shutdown System, Fire & Gas Detection System, SCADA server, and Alarm annunciation systems, but their PLCs couldn't talk to each other.

By Bill Lydon, Editor They say, “What goes around comes around.” I think this is happening with Advanced Process Control (APC) and Model Predictive Control (MPC). There seems to be a renewed interest in APC, and the systems, while not trivial, seem to be easier to use and lower cost.

ABB will supply an 800xA control system for K+S Potash Canada’s greenfield potash mine in Saskatchewan.