Emerson Process Experts Podcasts on Location Strategies

Increased Complexity in FLNG Projects

Wed December 17 2008

A few weeks ago, I wrote about a floating production, offloading and storage (FPSO) presentation shared with me. These, because of my background in of... read more

A few weeks ago, I wrote about a floating production, offloading and storage (FPSO) presentation shared with me. These, because of my background in offshore oil and gas production, personally fascinate me. As a freshly minted electrical engineer back in the day, I found it challenging to do projects on offshore platforms because they included safety shutdown systems, power generation and distribution, process control, and telecommunications. FPSOs and floating liquefied natural gas (FLNG) vessels add challenges way beyond what I saw--navigation, thrust, ballast and much more complex processes to safely control. Emerson's Knut Jorgensen and Wärtsilä's Ingebjørg Lien recently presented From MAC To "BIG MAC" For FLNG at the Commercialising FLNG Asia 2008 conference last month. The focus of their presentation was to discuss generic floating LNG plant design, technologies and expertise that Emerson and Wärtsilä combine to deliver. The name Big MAC comes from the main automation contractor acronym that's been increased in scope. Engineering services extend to electrical, instrumentation, telecommunications and navigation. Wärtsilä adds dual fuel engines (natural gas and diesel), generators, thrusters, and power distribution systems to the main automation contracting services normally provided by Emerson--design, engineering, project management, and project execution around the instrumentation, control, and safety systems. What reinforced my notion of vastly greater complexity was the breadth of scope in each area. For instance, in the safety and automation system area, the scope includes the production automation, hull automation, ballast and cargo monitoring and control, power management, safety, fire & gas, emergency shutdown systems, and the FLNG information management system (IMS). This information needs to be shared among the crew, who are located on many levels of the vessel from the engine rooms and high voltage (HV) rooms down low to the engine control room, central control room and bridge at the higher levels. Knut mentioned the goal for a successful project given this complexity is to do less work at the fabrication yard and pre-commission as many of the systems in modules as possible. This reduces overall engineering and commissioning time and finds the problems earlier when they are easier to solve. Knut also believes that wireless instrumentation can be a cost-effective alternative for 20 to 25% of the onboard instrumentation measurements. Anything to reduce the overall weight on these vessels increases their efficiency. And, wireless devices help eliminate cables, conduit, cable tray, and the overall steel and space required. For a typical 17,000+ I/O system, this could mean $2 million USD in capital savings plus the ongoing weight savings, which translate into lower operational costs. A final big challenge I gleaned was the global scope of these projects. The engineering, procurement, construction (EPC) contractors for both the hull and topside may be located in different regions, as are the owners, Emerson/Wärtsilä project center, and module fabrication sites. Global coordination and project management of resources in the U.S., Europe, India, Japan, Australia, China, Singapore and other locations is critical. Executing these as part of a "Big MAC" is an important step in reducing project risks, purchasing interfaces, and interface management. MP3 iTunes read less

Decisions for Operations Management Architectures

Thu December 11 2008

At the request of one of Emerson Process Experts blog readers who has long commute to and from his office, I started to add podcast recordings at the ... read more

At the request of one of Emerson Process Experts blog readers who has long commute to and from his office, I started to add podcast recordings at the end of each post to provide an audio version of each post, beginning this past October. Today, I thought we'd push the envelope a little further by conducting an interview with data management specialists, Bob Lenich and Joanne Salazar. We're discussing the decisions you might consider as you define your operations management strategy and architected solution. Here's a rough transcript of the podcast interview: Jim: Where should operations management (also commonly known by the MES acronym) functionality reside within your system architecture?Joanne: The ISA95 Enterprise-Control System Integration standard defines data models, work activity, and information exchange of operations management activities. ISA has defined a functional hierarchy model within a manufacturing operation that helps companies optimize functions, processes, and data. The activities defined in Levels 3, 2, or 1 are critical to plant safety, reliability, efficiency, product quality, and maintaining regulatory compliance. ISA95 Level 3 functions coordinate the resources (people, equipment, and materials) needed through all process steps to produce the end product. These solutions integrate across plant functions to enable optimized operations.Bob: Many people correlate MES with ISA Level 3 functionality. These functions are distinctive, yet it can be challenging to determine where MES functionality resides within the system architecture components, especially if the end user is integrating to an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system. Functions need to be evaluated based on organizational structure to determine the best fit for each activity into either the enterprise domain or the real-time plant floor arena. In a practical sense, this analysis defines who owns the function. Technology is then applied to achieve this functional structure. Using solutions from various suppliers can result in product overlaps and gaps in functionality. Each gap or overlap needs to be analyzed to determine how best to address the function.Jim: Does the selected technology play a role in these decisions?Joanne: In a way, it is a "Catch 22"; functional alignment activity is independent of the platform; however, in reality, some alignment decisions are dependent on the applications selected. How does an end user determine the best solution?Bob: The best result is achieved by optimizing the functional organizational structure; then identifying the technology solutions that best meet these needs. It is important to select a long-term solution partner with both experience and a committed technology investment program to help make these alignment decisions. For example, material management from a warehouse and purchasing perspective may best reside in an ERP system; however, materials management within the process (such as tracking lots and adjusting for potency) may best be performed by the MES solution.Jim: Are there other considerations in this decision process?Joanne: Yes, the required response time can help determine where the function should reside within the system architecture. Control systems provide response times in subseconds, seconds, minutes, and hours. MES systems typically provide response times of seconds, minutes, hours, shifts, and days. ERP systems respond in days, weeks, and months.Bob: That is right. However, the ease of integration between the systems can also be a defining factor in determining where functions should reside. Bottom line, each end user needs to evaluate their specific needs and organizational structure, and then work with a committed partner to determine the best solution.Jim: Joanne, Bob, I really appreciate your time, sharing your insights about operations management with the Emerson Process Experts readers and listeners. If you have thoughts on this approach or suggestions for future podcasts, I'd love to read or hear them! MP3 iTunes read less

From Smart Dust to Reliable Wireless Sensor Networks

Wed December 10 2008

At this ISA Expo 2008 this past October in Houston, Texas, I had the chance to catch Dr. Kris Pister's keynote presentation, From Smart Dust to Smart ... read more

At this ISA Expo 2008 this past October in Houston, Texas, I had the chance to catch Dr. Kris Pister's keynote presentation, From Smart Dust to Smart Plants: The Evolution of Wireless Sensor Networking. Kris is the Founder and chief technology officer for Dust Networks, which began operations in 2002. Beginning in the early 1990s, Kris saw the impact of Moore's Law on sensing, computation and communications technologies--ever falling costs and increasing power. He believed wireless sensor technology's size, power, and cost would also follow these trends and committed his energies to this pursuit. His research led to the vision for "smart dust" in the late 1990s. The components included passive communications, sensing, thick-film battery, solar cell recharging, power capacitance, analog I/O with digital signal processing (DSP) and laser diode communications--mostly built with Microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) technologies. In his research at University of California at Berkeley, he and his research team had a working prototype by the end of the 1990s. The team's work over the next several years was in the areas of ultra-low power and radio frequency (RF) communications. I had a great quote from his keynote in my notes, "RF is challenging. It's robust today because the team saw so many failures a decade ago." The basis for the smart dust vision was cheap, easy, off the shelf RF systems. It had a wide cross-section of possible uses in academic, military, and industrial applications. Kris shared an example of an earthquake engineering research center where wired, seismic testing cost $5000 per node for real-time data acquisition. The cost per node with wireless seismic sensors was $200 per node. They had similar successes with temperature sensors in an HVAC application on the UC Berkeley campus, deploying 50 wireless sensors in 3 hours and reducing the cost per node from $800 (wired) to $100 (wireless). For industrial applications, the team looked at research into the primary barriers for adoption of wireless sensor technology. The top four in order of concern were reliability, being standards-based, ease-of-use, and power consumption. Recognizing the need for industry standards for broad adoption of new technologies, they are participating in several: Dust Networks currently has leadership positions in several industry groups, including: the Wireless HART working Group (HART Foundation), the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), ISA's SP100.11 working group (ISA SP100) and the Wireless Industrial Networking Alliance (WINA). Specific to the WirelessHART standard: Dust Networks joined the HART Communications Foundation (HCF) in October 2005. Since then, Dust contributed its Time Synchronized Mesh Networking (TSMP) protocols and technology and collaborated with the HART Foundation and its member companies to develop the industrial automation market's first wireless standard for sensors. In an earlier post, I discussed some of the diversity techniques used in the WirelessHART standard to achieve greater than 99.9% reliability to address this top concern among process manufacturers in the adoption of wireless sensors. Kris also discussed their work on minimizing power consumption. Again turning back to my notes I captured this thought from the keynote, "Power- turning radios off is easy. Turning it on is hard... that's why time synchronized is so important. If all nodes in a mesh are within 0.1 msec, than A will wake up and listen for that length of time. A sends ACK to B. Keeps networks synchronized to 100 microseconds or so." Nice, elegant design... let every device in a self-organizing network get their sleep to conserve power and make sure they wake together in a window of time to communicate and re-synchronize before their next nap. A steady stream of news shows that Kris and the team's work on the vision of smart dust has paved the way for rapid adoption of self-organizing wireless networks across many industries and world areas. MP3 iTunes read less

Monitoring Gross Oil Product Flow with Wireless Field Devices

Fri December 05 2008

I had a chance to meet Emerson's Philip Schwarz a few years back in a multi-divisional marketing meeting. He had a slot on the agenda to discuss the t... read more

I had a chance to meet Emerson's Philip Schwarz a few years back in a multi-divisional marketing meeting. He had a slot on the agenda to discuss the trends in the oil & gas industry. He leads these efforts for Emerson Process Management's Rosemount measurement products. He was one, dynamic presenter, if you ever have a chance to hear one of his talks. Maybe I'll capture some video and post it in YouTube the next time I catch him presenting. I saw an email from Philip where he mentioned that the oil & gas producers have been big adopters of wireless field device communications technologies. Philip noted around 9 in 10 of these oil and gas wireless applications were in onshore oil & gas fields. A big driver of this technology adoption has been for gross oil production flow monitoring applications. The traditional way to measure gross oil production has been to use portable meter skids. These skids measure the oil, gas, and water content for each producing well on a site--when hooked up one by one. Since many fields are geographically dispersed, these measurements may be done one per month up to twice per year. After a well is tested, its production rate is assumed to be the last-tested measurement. It's important to note that these measurements are not to control the wellhead, but to monitor the production rates for each well. Now, if five months have passed, this last-tested measurement might not be very accurate. And problems may have occurred in the subsurface well formation causing a production drop. The main reason these wells have not been fully instrumented and been communicating continuously is the labor and installation costs of measurement devices, cabling, remote terminal units (RTUs), batteries, radios, etc. In many areas, these wells typically don't have the high production rates of offshore production wells. Hence, the traditional solution of a portable skid and schedule to conduct the flow measurements has been employed. Wireless measurement devices and self-organizing WirelessHART networks have changed the economics by significantly reducing the infrastructure costs. To do the gross oil production measurements, these onshore sites install Rosemount 3051S wireless pressure transmitters and 648 wireless temperature transmitters. Instead of once per month or twice per year, each well can be measured on the order of seconds. Communications between wireless devices can extend up to half a mile as the transmitters from surrounding wellheads self-organize to form a network with the wireless gateway devices. None of the cabling, cable trays, etc. is required, which significantly reduces the installation cost barrier. Philip shared a 2005 Society of Petroleum Engineers (SPE) paper with me written by engineers with one of the major U.S. oil producers. It shared a vision of the digital oil field that provides real-time monitoring, analysis, and control for optimum field management. This vision included making the oil field more like a factory where there is a higher level of measurement and control to improve efficiency. Technologies like WirelessHART self-organizing network communications and wireless-enabled field devices here in 2008 make possible many of the visions that were not economically justifiable when this paper was written. Next time, a nice video of Philip talking about this will save around 550 words! MP3 iTunes read less

Considering the Tradeoffs in Safety-Certified Sensors

Thu December 04 2008

Emerson's Dale Perry alerted me to a great article on safety-certified sensors in the November 2008 issue of Control Engineering magazine. Dale manage... read more

Emerson's Dale Perry alerted me to a great article on safety-certified sensors in the November 2008 issue of Control Engineering magazine. Dale manages the Rosemount pressure measurement line of products. The article, Practice Safe Sensing; Safety-certified sensors promise to cut costs and boost performance. But the tradeoffs must be carefully considered., described the advances in both numbers and intelligence of sensor devices used in process safety applications. The article defined these devices as: ...sensors can be certified by third parties to meet safety integrity levels [note: I've added hyperlinks for additional reference], or SIL, designations found in IEC 61508. One positive result of this is the potential to use fewer sensors without compromising safety, leading to a decrease in wiring and installation costs. Another positive effect is the potential for improved process control, largely due to increasingly intelligent sensors. Exida's principal partner, Bill Goble, shared how the number of safety certified transmitters from automation suppliers has increased from five in 2003 to 24 in 2007--with more in testing and certification as automation suppliers improve the design and testing processes required to achieve certification to the safety integrity levels. To mitigate risk for higher SIL applications, often you need multiple sensors (if not safety-certified sensors) connected in a one-out-of-two (1oo2) or two-out-of-three (2oo3) voting arrangement. Dale is quoted in the article and he discussed and amplified on the fewer sensors tradeoff: Fewer sensors increase the possibility of a false alarm, which carries a cost since it might shut down a process needlessly. The economic tradeoff is capital cost savings of fewer sensors and the associated installation and maintenance costs versus the probability of lost production from unplanned shutdowns caused by spurious trips. Dale described how incorporating the features necessary for certification became part of research & development best practices. The R&D team incorporates these best practices as new devices are developed and existing ones are enhanced. These safety-certified sensors still carry extra expenses like order checks of options for the required SIL application, failure modes, effects, and diagnostics analysis (FMEDA) documentation, serial numbers and failure data shipped with each sensor. On the increasing level of intelligence, Dale noted: The same intelligence that makes sensors safer increasingly supplies other capabilities... Users demand predictive diagnostics beyond the sensor. They want this functionality because more insight into a process helps prevent abnormal, and potentially unprofitable or dangerous, situations. Dale also gave a peek at future of Rosemount safety certified sensors when he stated: We see these advanced process diagnostics, as well as loop diagnostics, being included in future safety certified products. When developing and executing your IEC 61511 safety lifecycle programs, the intelligence in these sensors and throughout your safety instrumented functions (SIF) can help improve the diagnostic coverage and reduce manual testing. MP3 iTunes read less