Control's 10 most-read articles from August 2018

Sept. 13, 2018
From coverage of the 2018 Foxboro User Group and Honeywell Users Group to designing effective HMIs and Control's 2018 salary survey results, these were the most-read articles during the month of August 2018

1. World's largest petrochem complex relies on Schneider
From our live coverage of the 2018 Foxboro User Group, Reliance Industries Ltd.'s Upendra Joshi and B.R. Mehta presented "Deployment of new technologies in J3 projects," highlighting the company's Jamnagar's implementation of Schneider instrumentation. Read more.

2. How to design effective HMIs
Designing the best HMI requires designers to find the correct knowledge base to use. For existing processes, this is the operations team (including support personnel). For new processes, this is the design team (including operations and maintenance). Once the correct knowledge base is identified, the right questions must be asked to define and refine requirements. Read more.

3. Control's 2018 salary survey
The results for Control's 2018 salary survey offer an indication of the average professional benefits for those in the process automation control industry. This year's survey indicated that average age and pay are slowly turning down, while benefits and most other indicators hold steady. Read more.

4. Prevent pressure transmitter problems
A measurement is only as good as the measurement instrumentation's installation. Not enough knowledge is published or presented on how to make sure the installation doesn’t limit performance or create maintenance and reliability issues. Here, Hunter Vegas and Greg McMillan (co-founders of the ISA Mentor Program), joined by Daniel Warren, tell what they think is important. Read more.

5. Why and how to use ultrasonic flowmeters for flare flow metering
Existing industry regulations and standards provide helpful guidelines by defining the acceptable accuracy limits for flare flowmeters. The challenge is how to reveal the flowmeter inaccuracy and minimize errors in flare flow measurement. Here are tools to select, configure, install, test and maintain flowmeters in flare applications, and how to determine the flaring source using the built-in features of these flowmeter technologies. Read more.

6. The art of flowmeter selection
The co-founder of the ISA Mentor Program, Hunter Vegas, gives us considerable insight as to what flow measurements can and cannot do. Since this is such a vast topic, we focus on liquid flow. Read more.

7. Understanding P, I and D
Understanding what the proportional, integral and derivative terms do within the PID controller is important. It is that understanding that helps you choose appropriate action, troubleshoot controllers, choose appropriate modifications, or set up advanced controllers. Unfortunately, the controller synthesis approach, in which PID appears within Laplace Transform analysis, does not provide that functional understanding. Here is a more intuitive development of PID. Read more.

8. Emerson marks 50 years of pressure instrumentation innovation
With the 50th anniversary of Rosemount's 1151's introduction approaching, Control's Vice President of Content Keith Larson caught up with Scott Nelson, vice president and general manager of Rosemount pressure products at Emerson Automation Solutions, to discuss the five decades of innovation in this Q&A. Read more.

9. What the lack of cybersecurity of process sensors means
Joe Weiss responds to Dale Peterson's recent blog, "Two Real Questions on the Weissian Crusade for Securing Process Sensors, Actuators and Drives." Read more.

10. Honeywell rises to ExxonMobil challenge
From the live coverage of the 2018 Honeywell Users Group, ExxonMobil’s David Patin discussed how Honeywell had successfully paved the way for the company to preserve and bring forward its legacy TDC investments. Read more.