Every month, Control's editors take a specific product area, collect all the latest, significant tools we can find, and present them here to make your job easier. If you know of any tools and resources we didn't include, send them to [email protected], and we'll add them to the website.
SAFETY AND BPCS SYSTEM HMIS
The white paper, "Safety & Automation System (SAS)—How the Safety and the Automation Systems Finally Come Together as an HMI" by Ian Nimmo, discusses how to design HMIs and control rooms to accommodate safety instrumented systems, basic process control systems, fire and gas systems and security and environmental monitoring. It also includes best practices and guidelines for bringing these islands of technology together in smoothly working HMIs that accommodate the needs of operators. The direct link is located at http://tinyurl.com/5r4j495.
ControlGlobal.com
www.controlglobal.com
DART FOR SAFETY
This white paper, "Structural Principle of a DART Circuit," describes in detail the DART safety technology. DART operates on the basic principle that arcs, sparks or thermal effects that could form an explosive mixture and ignite should not occur during normal plant operation or in the event of faults. It differs from other explosion-proof systems in that higher power outputs than ever before can now be supplied to electrical equipment. The paper explains DART circuitry and how the technology works. A direct link is at http://tinyurl.com/6dtdoe6.
PEPPERL+fUCHS
www.pepperl-fuchs.com
SAFETY MATRIX GUIDE
Siemens Industry, Inc. is offering a free guide to its Simatic Safety Matrix comprehensive safety lifecycle tool for safety instrumented systems. The eight-page brochure discusses how plants can reduce costs while meeting safety compliance objectives by merging typical safety instrumented systems, engineering, development and operational tools. A direct link is at http://tinyurl.com/6ctfnf5.
Siemens Industry, Inc.
www.usa.siemens.com/processsafety
SYSTEM ARCHITECTURE DOESN'T MATTER
Back in the 1970s, the internal architecture of a safety system was of great importance. The way in which the systems builders demonstrated that their design could achieve the levels of integrity necessary for safety related applications was mainly by explaining how the internal structure provided redundancy. Over the years terms such as 1oo2, 2oo3 voting, DMR, TMR and Quad systems have become accepted—if not fully understood—in the market, and are still appearing in requirement specifications and suppliers' brochures. However, since the advent of the IEC61508 and IEC61511 standards, the term "safety integrity" is fully defined, and has lad to a new generation of systems where the terms DMR, TMR and Quad do not apply and are irrelevant. This white paper from ABB argues that categorizing the new generation of systems by their hardware architecture is no longer relevant and should be avoided. The direct link is at http://tinyurl.com/6yet8mp.
ABB
www.abb.com
EMERGENCY NOTIFICATION PLANNING
Emergency mass notification for hazardous industrial processing operations has traditionally focused on audible and visual signaling devices such as sirens, horns, warning lights, beacons, public address and intercom systems, and the extent of the ability to quickly alert anyone outside the plant—including fire, police and medical first responders—was until relatively recently limited to auto-dialing telecommunications.
On Sept. 11, 2001, however, everything changed. Since the attacks of 9/11, mass notification strategies and technologies have evolved quickly. This has been particularly evident in the case of hazardous industrial applications, and resulted in plant safety being suddenly and inextricably interwoven with critical security and detection functions.
This white paper discusses the newest technologies and strategies for mass notification, especially in the chemical industries. The direct link is at http://tinyurl.com/5u2jkys.
Federal Signal
www.federalsignal.com
