This Conference Is Too a Show!

According to Jim Cook, Chair of the Emerson Global Users Exchange Board, Emerson Exchange is a conference, not a show. And with over 268 presentations, short courses and workshops, the over 2050 attendees at the 2007 Exchange can be confident that Cook is correct. But the Exchange also has a really big show. Open in the evenings for the first three days of the event, the Exchange exhibit covers 45,000 square feet, making it approximately half as big as recent ISA shows. This is not a little tabletop show. The exhibit area is organized in rings, like the PlantWeb logo itself, with the central nodes being Emerson products from the various divisions, Rosemount, Fisher, Rosemount Analytical, Mobray, Bristol, and so on. Around the outside of the exhibit are arranged Emerson's partners"”companies who provide ancillary systems or products for use with the Emerson family of products"”and some other Emerson companies, like CSI Machinery Health Management and Emerson Control Techniques. Some of those partner companies themselves are quite large and substantial. Just a few examples include Fluor Corporation, OSIsoft, Matrikon, GE Healthcare, among the largest. Other well known partner names include Phoenix Contact, Pepperl+Fuchs, Intergraph, Hirschmann Automation, Mynah Technologies, MTL, HIMA, R. Stahl, Rittal, Beamex, MooreHawke, TiPS, Fluke Corporation, Weidmuller and even the U. S. Department of Homeland Security. (A complete list of Emerson's exhibit partners can be found on page 6 of the Conference Daily publication. And if you aren't here to read it, do you really care?) This Show is Connected "What people generally don't see," says incoming Board chair Marty Edwards, from Idaho National Laboratory, "is that this year, as in years past, we have a single DeltaV control system connected to every Emerson exhibit in the room, and all the field sensors and final control elements are running on that single DeltaV system." Emerson calls the exhibit "PlantWeb in Action." Little stand-up cards identify which products are connected to the control system, and over what data highway connection. A Field-Q Pneumatic valve actuator is connected to the DeltaV system via the As-i bus. Bettis' SIL-PAC "Sil3 suitable" valve is connected via HART. A Rosemount Analytical Flue Gas analyzer is connected to the DeltaV system via Foundation fieldbus. The DeltaV InSight system (for a description, see Dan Hebert's "Technically Speaking" column in the October issue of Control) is connected via ethernet, as is the DeltaV Batch system. And Heeeeere's Wireless! Of course, the Rosemount temperature devices are connected via HART wireless to Fisher ROC 800 controllers, and thence to the DeltaV system. Certainly not least, the newly introduced wireless transmitters are connected to the DeltaV via"¦wireless. One notable addition to the wireless sensors connected to the DeltaV is a lonely Siemens Sitrans P Pressure Transmitter, connected to the DeltaV using a prototype Rosemount Model 775 HART upgrade module (familiarly called a "thumb" by the Emerson wireless team), illustrating the SmartWireless claim that any HART device can be connected to a DeltaV system via the device. Over in the migration area, what Emerson calls "Control System Transition," Emerson is showing not only that they have multiple upgrade paths for their own and other control systems, but also that you can simply stand there and watch those upgrades work. There is a migration station from the old Provox to DeltaV. Nearby, Emerson is displaying a set of legacy Bailey Infi90 controllers connected to the central DeltaV system, right next to a Honeywell TDC2000 system doing the same thing. Emerson's migratory practices don't stop with DCS systems, either. Just down the exhibit is a set of legacy PLCs all happily talking DeltaV. There's an Allen-Bradley 1771, A Genius Fanuc PLC, A Logix 555, Modicon 140, and a Siemens TI505 using a Mynah PLC-to-I/O interface. Around the corner, Emerson is showing off its recent acquisition of Bristol Babcock, and the ControlWave SCADA system, which includes some new for Emerson features, like video security over SCADA. ControlWave's ability to integrate security with SCADA features is a definite advance for Emerson. One of the most interesting products in the Measurement Technologies section of the exhibit is a Rosemount dual vortex flowmeter, suitable for SIS applications. One of its transmitters is connected to the DeltaV via HART, while the other identical transmitter connects via Foundation fieldbus. The DeltaV Security Cyber-security exhibit, along with a visit to Booth 56 (Homeland Security) should set every user up with the tools, tips and best practices for implementing a more secure DeltaV system in their own plant. Shifting to Emerson's partner exhibits, one very interesting exhibit is the first look at the "World's First Fieldbus Calibrator" from Beamex. Pepperl+Fuchs, MooreHawke, MTL, and Phoenix Digital are among the networking vendors exhibiting. At the same time, higher level software products are offered from Incuity (Business Intelligence for Manufacturing), OSIsoft, TiPS, Matrikon and Intergraph, among others. You also won't help noticing that all the power supplies on the PlantWeb in Action exhibits are from Emerson partner and exhibitor Sola/Hevi-Duty. The Big Valve On the exhibit map is a small circle on the right hand side labeled "big valve." It is, indeed, a big valve. But it isn't the big iron that is most interesting, it's what Fisher's valve experts have done with the actuator tuning. "Most control valves that are used for anti-surge service in the oil and gas industry have significant overshoot or undershoot problems when they have to move quickly from one position to another," says John Wilson, oil and gas industry manager for Fisher Controls. "So what we've done is provide some very simple tuning tools that are built into the valve control software. Using a minor loop for feedback inside the actuator's feedback loop, we can prevent overshoot or undershoot, even at very small openings, without introducing heavy damping into the system. This is a big advance for control valve actuation."