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| What WirelessHART™
Can Do For You |
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When facing new operational challenges, innovative companies
find solutions using wireless technologies.
WirelessHART™
is not just another piece of manufacturing bling—the
equivalent of the newest “must have” cell phone
or MP3 player that, in reality, consumers can do just fine
without. Rather, it extends the power of wired HART and has
the potential to become an essential part of your process
plant’s communications network. It opens up new possibilities
for measurement, testing, quality control, asset management,
and safety. What follows is an exploration of some of these
potential uses.
NOT JUST “PART-TIME”
HELP
The truth is, and always has been, that HART communication
does aid device commissioning and troubleshooting, but it
is a “full-time” resource, providing multivariable
process data as well as device status and health information.
And now, with the introduction of WirelessHART™
each and every one of those features and benefits are easier
than ever to collect.
Gareth Johnston, a Fieldbus communication specialist with
ABB, says “The low cost of installing WirelessHART™
will result in the end user being able to install short-term
or ad hoc process measurements to improve the view of the
process, perhaps to solve quality issues.”
Marty Zielinski, Emerson Process Management’s director
of HART and fieldbus technology, concurs. “WirelessHART™
can also be used to add new wireless measurement points at
up to 90 percent lower installed cost than conventional wired
points.” Whether you need additional monitoring, easier
ways to calibrate field instruments, better records of instrument
configuration changes and calibration records, online insight
into instrumentation status, health and performance, assistance
in diagnosing and troubleshooting instrumentation, speedier
commissioning, monitoring of critical data, or even supervisory
process control, wired- and now WirelessHART™-
is able to meet each and every one of those requirements.
THE WAY IT COULD BE
Some major industrial users, such as
BP and PPG, are installing prototype projects. Both companies
have installed Emerson’s wireless systems, that company
spokespersons have said are intended to be pre-standard WirelessHART™
devices that can easily be upgraded once the standard is completely
released and certified devices are available. Other vendors,
such as ABB, Honeywell, and Yokogawa, have also had beta test
sites.
But because WirelessHART™
is so new, real-world examples are not available. So to explore
the benefits of WirelessHART™
we have provided four fictitious companies with real problems
found in real process operations and that demonstrate the kinds
of solutions WirelessHART™
can provide. Here are the real-world challenges faced by these
fictitious companies.
- Everyday Chemicals wants
to expand its product offerings and quickly learns that
it also needs better visibility into its processes.
- Faced with aging instrumentation, no visibility about
instrumentation health and performance, and ever-increasing
customer demands for water, Mega-Metropolis
Water Treatment needs a reliable, cost-effective
solution that can be updated over time and will reuse as
much of its existing instrumentation infrastructure as possible.
- When Really Cool Colored Inks
hires a new plant manager away from a competitor, it learns
why its competitor is more efficient, agile, and profitable:
It’s using asset management software to access process
and instrumentation information. Really Cool wants to move
in the same direction.
- Giganto Refining wants
to extend the interval between planned maintenance shutdowns,
but to do so and remain OSHA (Occupational Safety &
Health Agency)-compliant, it needs a way to extend the full
proof-testing intervals of its safety instrumented systems
(SIS).
AD HOC MEASUREMENTS
Sometimes the addition of new measurement
points can help improve product quality, process reliability
or plant safety. Many modern analytical instruments provide
multiple variables that are accessible via WirelessHART™
By replacing obsolete, single-purpose instrumentation with
HART-aware devices and adding self-powered WirelessHART™
adapters, new and/or secondary process measurements can be
provided easily and cost-effectively.
For example, Everyday Chemicals
will replace several single-measurement temperature
transmitters with dual-measurement tools. For each new transmitter,
the original (primary) temperature measurement used the existing
wiring and I/O channel and appeared on the operator’s
graphic exactly like the old temperature measurement. The
new (secondary) temperature measurement will be collected
and reported via WirelessHART™
communication. Because of the ease of installation, Everyday
Chemicals will be able to replace the old transmitters
with new ones while the process remains operational.
When Everyday analyzes the cost savings of not having to add
long runs of conduit and wire, not having to shut down the
process, not having to re-do control system upgrades and configuration,
and not having to retrain operators, it will be able to add
several WirelessHART™
process measurement points that increase process visibility.
Armed with new process insights, the operators will be able
to significantly improve Everyday Chemicals’ product
quality. |
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AGING
INSTRUMENTATION
When you read articles in trade publications or attend conferences
and user group events, it’s easy to forget that not everyone
has installed cutting-edge digital fieldbus. In fact, there
are still many plants with decades-old pneumatic instrumentation.
A significant number of process control installations have yet
to make it to the 4-20mA analog electronic era, and there are
boatloads of pre- HART 4-20mA instruments and another boatload
of HART instruments that are under-utilized throughout the world.
Because WirelessHART™
is fully backward compatible, it opens up all sorts of opportunities
to use those thousands of miles of existing wire to ease replacement
of aging instrumentation as well as begin using HART information
to improve process reliability, availability, and plant utilization.
Like many utilities and municipalities, Mega-
Metropolis Water Treatment cannot justify a rate increase
to cover the cost of upgrading to digital fieldbus technologies.
However, it also cannot afford to maintain the status quo; it
needs a reliable, cost-effective solution that can be updated
over time and reuse as much of the existing instrumentation
infrastructure as possible. Enter WirelessHART™.
By conducting an in-depth instrumentation audit, Mega-Metropolis
will be able to develop an upgrade plan that can be accomplished
within existing budget constraints. |
| SAFETY
EXPERT WEIGHS IN |
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When asked
about the benefits of using HART process and device information
to extend safety system proof-testing intervals, exida
founder and recognized safety instrumented system expert,
William Goble, said, “I believe that the use of
HART in SIS for purposes of performing proof-testing or
semi-automatic proof-testing could be very valuable. I
see an increasing number of SIS manufacturers adding HART
AI/AO input modules. The downside of HART is that configuration
variables can be accessed and changed via handheld communicators.
Some safety transmitters require that HART be disconnected
during safety operation, as the devices’ software
and hardware do not provide specific protection against
that possibility.” |
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Mega-Metropolis
will develop a three-year plan to replace aging, but critical
existing instruments with new HART instruments, each fitted
with WirelessHART™
adapters.
Less critical instruments will be placed in the “replace-on-failure-pay-out-of-maintenance”
category. Anytime one of these instruments fails or otherwise
qualifies for replacement, Mega-Metropolis will purchase
a HART instrument with a WirelessHART™
adapter and pay for it using money from its maintenance
budget.
Because this plan uses existing wiring, instrument replacements
will be easy to install, calibrate, and commission. After
a minor upgrade to existing handheld configuration devices,
Mega- Metropolis also will be able to configure the new
WirelessHART™
parameters. With rare exceptions, a measurement will be
offline for less than one hour. Armed with new process
information, Mega- Metropolis Water Treatment will find
it can improve filter efficiency and thus filter maintenance,
thereby maximizing chlorine effectiveness. The ability
to analyze HART information also will enable Mega-Metropolis
to reduce filter maintenance frequency, thereby freeing
up more maintenance dollars to purchase additional HART
instruments.
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MANAGING ASSETS
The efficient management of a business’s assets
is really what CEOs are expected to do, and how well they
do it is what Wall Street analysts use to reward or punish
a company’s stock.
Asset management information is a critical predictive
maintenance component, but that’s only one of its
benefits. It can also capture important institutional
knowledge.
Like an increasing number of companies, Really
Cool Inks specializes in producing “designer
products”; that is, products designed to meet specific
customer and/or niche markets. The upside of designer
products is the potential for greater profits; the downside
is that frequently a significant amount of time elapses
between production batches, and product formulations aren’t
well-documented or universally understood by operators.
Really Cool Ink’s new plant manager understands
that in order to capitalize on the upside of designer
products, his plant needs to minimize the downside impacts,
and that means establishing a robust asset management
infrastructure that can capture the deep process knowledge
that resides in experienced operators, maintenance technicians,
and senior automation engineers.
Using a similar, but a more aggressive approach than Mega-Metropolis
Water Treatment, Really Cool
Ink’s plan includes using the control system
and a robust process-variable historian to identify the
“gold production standard” for each product,
with full recognition that because some |
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| MIX
& MATCH? NO PROBLEM |
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Few, if any,
process plants use only one instrument communication means.
Older plants still have miles and miles of wire. Plants
using digital fieldbus communications (i.e., DeviceNET,
Foundation, Profibus, etc.) likely have installed different
communication protocols to meet different requirements.
The result is often a plant with a little-ofthis and a
little-of-that, which when examined as a whole, produces
the simple question, “Is there an easy way to get
information from these multiple communication protocols
into one collector (repository) device?” Now, with
the introduction of industrial wireless, the answer has
become much simpler; You bet there is and WirelessHART™
is part of that solution! |
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products are
so infrequently produced, it will take years to develop
the entire gold-standard library. Nevertheless,
Really Cool Ink’s initiative isn’t
about quick profits; this asset management endeavor is
viewed by the entire company as strategic to its long-term
success. Therefore, the chief executives are committed
to the tactical implementation of the plan.
To ensure that as much in-process information as possible
is captured, Really Cool Inks
is identifying the critical measurements and replacing
all the non-HART instruments with HART-enabled and WirelessHART™
devices and adapters. During the initial instrumentation
audit, Really Cool Inks has been pleasantly surprised
to find that many of its instruments are already HART-capable,
but because they had been installed to help simplify commissioning
and calibration, device diagnostic and process information
has not been collected from a single instrument.
Really Cool Ink is still in the early stages of
its plan to capture exactly what is required to become
more efficient, agile, and profitable in the delivery
of designer products. However, it knows one thing for
sure; WirelessHART™
is one of the critical components to its success. |
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SAFETY INSTRUMENTED SYSTEMS
During the past couple of years, process industry safety
standard IEC 61511/ANSI/ISA 84.0.1 and its related safety
instrumented systems (SIS) have been grabbing more and
more headlines. At the same time, ever-increasing energy
demands are forcing companies like Giganto Refining
to seek ways to extend the interval between planned
maintenance shutdowns (outages) while remaining OSHA
regulation-compliant.
While examining what will be required to extend the
interval between planned outages, one of the problems
Giganto engineers
have identified is the safety criteria used to design
its SISs. Unless Giganto’s engineers can find
a way to extend the interval between when the SIS is
fully proof-tested – a complex test that requires
the process to be shut down – it will not be possible
to extend the interval between planned outages.
Consistent with good engineering practices, Giganto
uses hardwired instruments as SIS inputs. To facilitate
commissioning and calibration efforts, HART instruments
have been purchased and installed. Though Giganto’s
engineers are aware of the process and device diagnostics
available in HART devices, efforts to collect and analyze
the information have yet to be undertaken.
Now, with an urgency to extend the interval between
full proof-testing, Giganto’s engineers are taking
a hard look at HART information, especially clause 3
of the IEC 61511 standard.
Clause 3 defines, among other things, the safe failure
fraction (SFF): the fraction of safe failures and dangerous
detected failures in relation to the total failures.
After consulting with safety system consultants, Giganto’s
engineers are convinced that by adding asset management
software and WirelessHART™
adapters to its existing SIS HART devices, they will
be able to use the HART process and device diagnostics
to improve the system’s SFF and thereby extend
the time between full proof-testing.
What makes the WirelessHART™
adapters especially attractive is that each can be added
anywhere along the transmitter wires, and the new devices
do not introduce any common-cause faults.
To minimize the possibility that the HART con- figuration
variables of the safety system transmitters might be
inadvertently changed via a handheld communicator, Giganto
engineers will place each safety system transmitter
in a double-locked instrument enclosure and place one
key under the control of the maintenance shop foreman
and the second under that of the operations supervisor.
Through the use of WirelessHART™
asset management software and some clever physical transmitter
configuration security plans, Giganto Refining will
be able to improve the SFF of its safety systems, thereby
extending the interval between full proof-testing and,
in turn, extending the interval between planned maintenance
shutdowns (outages), all while remaining OSHA regulation-
and IEC 61511- conformant.
ADDITIONAL WIRELESS OPPORTUNITIES
Though early deployments of WirelessHART™
are expected to be adaptors installed on hardwired devices,
the HART 7 standard does provide for fully wireless
HART deployments.
Beyond process monitoring, wireless is a natural fit
to provide a cost-effective means for health, safety,
and environmental monitoring in such areas as area gas
detectors, water effluent, gas emissions, relief devices,
steam traps, and safety showers.
AREA GAS DETECTORS
Many process plants require numerous gas detectors throughout
the plant to ensure that the air is safe to breathe
and to work in. Wireless detectors will not only provide
an efficient means of providing an alert to operators,
but also to monitor the operational status of the devices.
WATER EFFLUENT, GAS EMISSIONS,
AND RELIEF DEVICES
The quality of any liquid or gas leaving a process facility
is vitally important to maintaining environmental quality.
Regulations are requiring more measurements at more
frequent intervals to ensure compliance and decrease
the number of fugitive emissions. Specifically, WirelessHART™
devices could be used to monitor the opening of relief
valves or the condition of rupture disks. By connecting
the wireless data to the environmental monitoring software
for the plant, WirelessHART™
devices can provide an easy, cost-effective way to audit
the required measurements without extensive modifications
to existing control systems and plant wiring. Since
many effluents aren’t located conveniently close
to the center of the plant, the ability of WirelessHART™
devices to operate on batteries and completely wirelessly
makes these measurements possible after all.
STEAM TRAPS
As energy prices rise, it becomes increasingly important
to limit the amount of energy wasted. Plants often have
many steam traps, and these can be easily monitored
for unusual steam flows, allowing notification of a
need for correction of faulty operation that might otherwise
go unnoticed for some time.
“We’re doing some temperature profiling
on a stagnant steam line that is out in the middle between
two major parts of the plant,” says PPG’s
Rob Brooks, “where there aren’t even junction
boxes.” WirelessHART™-enabled
sensors can save thousands of dollars in steam costs
for very little outlay.
SAFETY SHOWERS
In the United States, OSHA’s First Alert Response
guidelines require that plant operators be alerted within
10 seconds of an activated safety shower. Many remote
safety showers are located in hazardous locations with
no existing signal wiring. A self-powered WirelessHART™
pressure transmitter could be used and would only be
required to switch on its radio when the safety shower
is operated or for remote diagnostic checking.
PROCEED WITH CONFIDENCE
WirelessHART™
is an extension of the well-known, widely accepted and
proven-in-use HART Communication Protocol that has helped
improve thousands of process control facilities worldwide.
You already have the instruments; now you can unchain
the data in them. By updating the device description
file, the same tools you already use become suitable
for use with WirelessHART™
devices. WirelessHART™
devices can be configured wirelessly too. WirelessHART™
uses the experience and knowledge gained using HART
to minimize training and simplify maintenance and support
activities.
With WirelessHART™
you are assured of the same attention to interoperability
and robustness you’ve come to expect of wired
HART. You get to use the same instruments in the same
way, and you get the extra benefits. Like its wired
counterpart, WirelessHART™
technology ensures your investment will be protected
well into the future.
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