PACE June 08

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PROCESS & CONTROL ENGINEERING

Print Post Approved PP255003/00539

June 2008 • volume 61 • no 5 www.pacetoday.com.au

New interoperability challenge The Industrial Interoperability Compliance Institute (IICI) continues to build membership for the development of a compliance and assurance organisation.

THE Institute, formed on May 1, 2008, will initially use WBF B2MML Data Exchange Schemas based on ISA95 Standards. Membership is being added from the food and beverage industry, and from global owner-operators in Europe, demonstrating the broad appeal and importance of the mission of the IICI. Support already comes from oil and gas, automotive and pharmaceutical manufacturers and processors. The Institute has also gained the backing and support of suppliers and integrators of mission critical manufacturing systems.

IICI will make compliance testing available that validates interoperability between enterprise, supply chain, and

plant operations systems such ERP, SCM, MOM, LIMS, PLM, CMMS, WMS, APS, SCADA, process control systems, and other manufacturing/production applications. Test specifica-

Current industrial standards organisations have been defining interoperability and data exchange for 15 years, but there are only limited agencies to definitively confirm vendor

The IICI will make compliance testing available that validates interoperability between enterprise, supply chain, process control systems and other manufacturing/production applications. tions are derived from schemas based on the ISA95 Standards. IICI is chartered under the Automation Systems Compliance Institute and is recognised as the official compliance testing organization for WBF schemas.

claims of compatibility or degree of compliance of end user applications and interfaces. With no independent agency manufacturing operations management to validate vendor’s software or end-user systems claims, ven-

dors and end-users alike are confused on what an actual level of system interoperability is in terms of performance and integration cost and time.

IICI can be the independent agency due to independence from vendors, association with a recognised nonprofit industry association, experience in industrial interface development, an established international network of experts, and a deep understanding of industrial interoperability standards.

Organisations interested in becoming involved should contact Andre Ristaino, Managing Director, Automation Standards Compliance Institute, at aristaino@isa.org. For more information, visit www.isa.org/asci

Oldies but goodies, wanted WHILE many companies might pride themselves in having the latest technology, it’s time for those who have the oldest to come forward and be rewarded for it.

Moore Industries is celebrating its 40th Anniversary this year, and they are trying to find the oldest of their products that are still in service.

Recently, several of their products – including the NET Concentrator System (NCS) smart I/O system – logged

an astounding three years in an environmental chamber, running at temperatures approaching the boiling point of water.

The Highly Accelerated Life Test (HALT) shows that, as of February 2008, the instrumentation had logged the equivalent of 171,000 hours without failure – almost 20 years – and the test continues.

The goal is to reach 300,000 hours, or 34 years of continuous service.

Many older products are prob-

ably still in service – maybe even going back to the 1968 Model SCT signal conditioner, one of the first products – and Moore Industries wants to find them.

They are offering U$500 in merchandise to the top three companies who can prove they are still using the oldest Moore Industries products.

To submit an entry for the Oldest Moore Industries Product, send an email to oldestmiiproduct@miinet.com

by August 1, 2008.

HELPING YOU INTEGRATE MACHINE SAFETY FOR MAXIMUM PRODUCTIVITY Achieve your factory floor goals with the peace of mind that comes with an integrated safety system. www.rockwellautomation.com.au

INSIDE GOING GREEN ... AGAIN >>> PAGE 14 TRANSFORMING LEGACY HMI-SCADA SYSTEMS >>> PAGE 27

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contents JUNE 2008

PROCESS & CONTROL ENGINEERING

Head Office: Tower 2, 475 Victoria Avenue, Chatswood NSW 2067 Locked Bag 2999 Chatswood DC NSW 2067 Tel: (02) 9422 2999 Fax: (02) 9422 2977 Editor: Miguel Gonzalez Tel: (02) 9422 2976 Fax: (02) 9422 2722 Email: miguel.gonzalez@reedbusiness.com.au National Sales Manager: Simon Flint PO Box 4114, Knox City Centre Post Shop, Wantirna South, VIC 3152 Mobile: 0448 071 896 Fax: (03) 9800 0790 Email: simon.flint@reedbusiness.com.au NSW Sales: Justina Gill Tel: (02) 9422 2974 Fax: (02) 9422 2722 Mobile: 0424 811 124 Email: justina.gill@reedbusiness.com.au QLD Sales: Sharon R. Amos PO Box 3136, Bracken Ridge, QLD 4017 Tel: (07) 3261 8857 Fax: (07) 3261 8347 Mobile: 0417 072 625 Email: sharon.amos@reedbusiness.com.au SA & WA Sales: David Murray Smith AGS Media Unit 2/497 Marion Road, South Plympton, SA 5038 Tel: (08) 8371 5800 Fax: (08) 8371 5900 Mobile: 0411 748 213 Email: david@agsmedia.com.au Production Co-ordinator: Tracy Engle Tel: (02) 9422 2707 Fax: (02) 9422 2655 Email:tracy.engle@reedbusiness.com.au Graphic Design: David Ashley Email: david.ashley@reedbusiness.com.au RBI MANUFACTURING & ELECTRONICS GROUP Publisher: Chris Williams SUBSCRIPTION: $140.00 pa incl GST OVERSEAS SUBSCRIPTIONS: NZ: $A149.00 pa & OS: $A155.00 pa CUSTOMER SERVICE: 1300 360 126 Copyright © Reed Business Information 2008 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or copied in any form or by any means without the written permission of the publisher.

34 news TOP STORIES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1-4 Looking for the oldest instrument . . . . . . 1 ABB goes to Pluto . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 The month in review . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 PINTO’S POINTERS . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 VIEWPOINT George Maltabarow, Managing Director, EnergyAustralia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

10

BEHIND THE SCENES Not another brick on the wall, Austral Bricks’s motor and drive solution . . . . . 12

features IN CONVERSATION WITH: The ADVANTECH AUSTRALIA team. . . . 24

ZENITH AWARDS 2008 The late entries also count . . . . . . . . . . 33

ENVIRONMENT AND SUSTAINABILITY Going green … again . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14

FLUID HANDLING

26

Calculating flow . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19

SCADA

new products

Transforming legacy HMI-SCADA systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27

MOTORS AND DRIVES ABN 47 000 146 921 ACN 000 146 921

8,760 September, 2007 ISSN 329-622

ABC of drives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31

TEST AND MEASUREMENT

TECHNICAL LITERATURE . . . 10

regulars

NEW PRODUCTS . . . . . . . . . . 39

Events . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42

NEXT MONTH IN PACE

Creating a hybrid test system . . . . . . . . 35

increase UPTIME

46

17

63

88

Zenith Awards, the winners issue

reduce WASTE

increase PROFITS

100

Production and Performance Management Solutions HMI/SCADA | Historian | MES | Plant Portal | Plant Reporting www.pacetoday.com.au

info.australia@wonderware.com www.wonderware.com PACE June 2008 3

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News

ABB goes to Pluto ABB will supply equipment for Woodside’s $12 billion Pluto Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) Project, currently under construction in Western Australia. The contract is worth 64 million.

“This is a very exciting project for us to be involved in, particularly as it is planned to be one of the fastest developed (from discovery to first gas) LNG projects in the world,” said Steve Hollyoak, ABB Account Manager. ”Our understanding of Woodside’s technical and equipment performance requirements has been acquired over a long period of time; our history of supply to Woodside dates back 25 years. Our association first began back in 1983, with the supply of switchgear and motor control centres. Our more recent involvement includes consecutive North West Shelf – LNG Train IV and Train V Expansion Projects.”

‘Lossy’ force

An artist’s impression for the Pluto LNG plant

Biofuel demand ignites crime wave HOMER Simpson did it once, but now restaurants in the USA are reporting an increase in the theft of used cooking oil, a trend that has been linked to the growing demand of biofuels. The process of converting grease to fuel removes glycerine and adds methanol to the oil, leaving a thinner product that can power a diesel engine. Biodiesel can also blend with petroleum diesel, and as diesel prices go up, so does the value of grease. The National Biodiesel Board reports U.S. production reached 500 million gallons last year, up from just 75 two years earlier. ISA reports

D’oh! Demand makes grease very tempting

that in the last three years, the price of soybean oil, the main feedstock for U.S. biodiesel, has tripled.

“Restaurants and staff are no longer looking at this material as trash, but as something that’s will go into vehicles,” said Karri Ving, who runs San Francisco’s new waste cooking oil collection program. “Unless you lock down every trash can, thefts are going to happen.” Drivers for Blue Sky Bio-Fuels, a grease hauler that also produces biodiesel, often find the 300-gallon dumpster outside the Oakland Coliseum nearly dry, despite the dozens of concessions stands that regularly dump their oil there. Losses at that site have cost the company U$3,700 in oil revenues, said a business developer.

AN Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) Working Group will develop a framework for using IP-based routing techniques over low-power, “lossy” networks – networks that wirelessly connect large numbers of sensors and other small, embedded devices in applications ranging from factory automation to the “connected home.”

The group is co-chaired by JeanPhilippe Vasseur and David Culler, from Arch Rock Corp. and Cisco, and intends to develop efficient and interoperable routing protocols that support the use of open-standard, low-power IP networking over a variety of physical links, including IEEE 802.15.4, Bluetooth, Low Power WiFi and wired links.

“The IP standard is moving at breakneck speed into new spheres such as industrial monitoring, building automation, and urban infrastructure,” said Culler. “It is now critical to specify the most efficient dynamic routing protocols with multi-vendor interoperability in mind.”

?

QuestionoftheMonth What are the problems to watch for when overdriving a motor?

[Answer: page 42]

The month that was Our website’s top stories in May 2008 Rockwell Automation will work with the Royal Australian Mint to upgrade their production and materials handling systems of the Canberra facility, which is capable of producing two million circulating coins per day.

PROFIBUS International reported 1.14 million PROFINET and 23.3 million PROFIBUS nodes installed worlwide, aiming for 3 million by 2010.

CSIRO and NASA are collaborating to develop exploration technologies used by the Australian minerals industry, for use on the Moon and Mars.

Schneider Electric will work with Anglo Platinum to

collaborate on the development of market leading MES. The partnership aims to deliver Ampla, Anglo Platinum's MES solution, over the next three years.

The Government launched a $250 million Enterprise Connect network with ten centres around the nation to help businesses succeed and help create high wage, high skilled jobs now and for the future.

Testo Australia moved to a new office located in Croydon South, East of Melbourne.

Citect received the 2008 Frost and Sullivan Australia and New Zealand Award for Market Leadership in SCADA Systems.

Moore Industries launched SNAP, a new service to meet unusual signal interface needs in industrial process control, systems integration and factory automation applications.

HIMA launched a new safety system for the process industry. supported by a specifically trained sales team and a new Managing Director for Australia, Dean McNair.

Over 200 inventors, including Aussie Derek Real, celebrated Endress+Hauser’s new record of 182 patent applications in 2007. They also acknowledged the winners of the ‘Patent Rights Incentive Awards’ for patents with a substantial effect on the business.

100 years of innovation and know-how embedded in every device. www.foxboro.com/instrumentation Northern Territory Territory Instruments Phone: 08 8947 5450

Western Australia Queensland AIMS Fox All Phone: 08 9459 6211 Phone: 07 3256 4444

Victoria Fox All Phone: 03 9735 8888

New South Wales Fidera Phone: 02 8825 6222

South Australia V&I Australia Phone: 08 8281 8299

Tasmania W.A Cromarty & CO Phone: 03 6344 9110

© 2008 Invensys Systems Inc. All rights reserved. Invensys and Foxboro are trademarks of Invensys plc or its subsidiaries and affiliated companies. All other product names may be the trademarks of their respective owners.

4 June 2008 PACE

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Pinto’s pointers

Whither automation MANY people think that the automation industry is quickly developing a “skills shortage” which will occur after the current generation of engineers retires. Where will the new engineers and technicians come from to operate future factories and process automation plants?

In the old days, instrumentation technicians and engineers were not really computer literate. Process engineering skills had to be acquired through a long “apprenticeship” – often years, and even decades. The problem today is that corporate administrators are simply extrapolating those old patterns of employment.

As industry transforms into a hightech workplace, the new generation of automation engineers and technicians will be completely different.

They will have grown up with computer games, the Internet, PDAs and mobiles. Some computer games are more complex than typical control or monitoring systems. By comparison, the software tools and smart equipment in today’s control rooms should be a cakewalk. Sadly, large end-user company policies are still measuring progress by obsolete learning standards. And this is why bright youngsters shun jobs in factories and plants, and go off looking for careers outside the automation business.

The Instrumentation, Systems and Automation Society (ISA) is working diligently to develop the image and value of “certified automation professionals”. But progress is stymied by lack of recognition of the profession.

Here’s the key question: will automation professionals be recognised with higher base pay and faster advancement? Without that recognition, certification is worthless.

ISA’s challenge is to convince employers of the merits of the CAP program. If there’s a big pay differential that comes with CAP certification, engineers will want to achieve that status.

Dick Morley, father of the PLC and co-author of the book, “The Technology Machine – how manufacturing will look in the year 2020”, suggests that the remedies require significant social change, a modification of the mind-set.

Young people must “feel” that engineering is significant work. Pay scales must change, to encourage the brightest and best to become engineers and innovators. Manufacturing people must be considered and respected as professionals. Heroes of engineering and manufacturing must be recognised and lauded.

6 June 2008 PACE

China low-ball pricing In the early 1990s, China was merely a low cost place to make labourintensive products. Now the country with the world’s largest population has become the most powerful force in manufacturing. Prices for Chinese manufactured goods are typically half of comparable U.S. and European products, which gives China a strong competitive advantage. But it’s not low-cost labour – it’s low-ball pricing.

China simply accepts much lower profit margins.

U.S. businesses develop products with 50-60% gross profit margins and 10-15% net profit. Developing countries (other than China) look for 30-35% gross-profit, or 5-10% netprofit. China accepts gross-profit margins of only 5-7%, with 0-2% net-profit. Therefore, even with comparable manufacturing costs, Chinese products are the cheapest.

Here’s a simple example to illustrate the point: If a product costs $40 to manufacture, the target selling price will be $80 in the US, $60 in other countries. The Chinese would sell that product for just $45, maybe even $40 (zero margin). This astounds most outside observers-how can a profit making enterprise survive (capital and cash flow) with no profit?

In China, short- and medium-term operating deficits are acceptable since the government manipulates and controls capital. Planners recognise the demand for short-term profit as the Achilles’ heel of capitalism; their primary strategic objective is long-term global market share. The tactics: a/ High volume; b/ Fast response; c/ Immediate local employment; d/ High investment in automation and quality to maintain price leadership.

For America, the remedies require significant attitude shifts. Our shortterm financial mind-set must change.

Business needs to realise continual quarter-to-quarter increases in revenue and profits cannot continue on and on with work that is done elsewhere in the world.

It must be recognised that manufacturing and job creation are not just political or business manipulations, but the building blocks of society. To be competitive in global markets, it’s important to keep investing in jobs, to upgrade factories. Entrepreneurship and talent must be encouraged and stimulated to thrive in the manufacturing sector.

Jim Pinto is an industry analyst and commentator jim@jimpinto.com www.jimpinto.com www.pacetoday.com.au

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News

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8 June 2008 PACE

VIEWPOINT GEORGE MALTABAROW MANAGING DIRECTOR, EnergyAustralia

Energy opportunities are at hand an advantage from this shift in busiTHE message is now clear. Climate ness priorities. change is real, and the time to get Both regulation and efficiency serious about reducing greenhouse opportunities for business can be emissions is upon us. Of all the expected to reveal prospects for the options before us in the path to a control industry. lower carbon economy, improving The introduction of two compulsory the efficiency of energy use is widely national schemes – the Energy Effiregarded as the least cost, and with ciency Opportunities Program (EEO) the lowest barrier to early implemenand the National Greenhouse and tation.

Energy Reporting System commit Efficiency is at the core of most sucmany businesses to monitor and cessful businesses, but the efficient use of energy hasn’t always been report their energy use, and the Auspart of that success story. In many tralian Emissions Trading Scheme cases, limited capital, low energy due to be launched in 2010 provides costs and insufficient return have a further price incentive for all busileft many energy efficiency improvenesses to monitor their energy use ments still sitting on the to-do-list. It and improve their energy efficiency. is often the case that there are highEffective controls can play a key role er priority issues that attract attenin helping businesses meet these tion and capital. challenges.

However, changes in community attiThe EEO Program goes even further tudes, energy reporting guidelines in committing businesses to identify and government policy are now makand publicly report upon efficiency ing demand management and energy opportunities with a payback of less efficiency projects more attractive than four years. The program came for businesses of all sizes. And the into effect in 2006 and is a requireimpact of emisment for businesses sions trading on that use more than Many energy efficiency 500,000 GJ of energy electricity prices could be the final per year. improvements are still incentive needed to With more than 200 sitting on the to-do-list make these procorporations regisjects business crititered for the procal instead of floating on the periphgram, representing approx 60 perery. cent of all business energy use in EnergyAustralia has extensive pracAustralia, the opportunities are tical experience of helping business immense. The effective use of conuse energy more efficiently and trols can be expected to play a sigreduce their demand. Our demand nificant role in many of the efficiency management unit has engaged with opportunities identified. hundreds of large commercial and Government has not restricted its industrial customers to improve their actions to regulation; many grants Power Factor and energy costs. And programs at the Federal and State our Testing and Certification unit has level are available to help businesses also worked with 75 customers to by making many opportunities more measure and manage their electricity affordable. The recent Federal Buduse via high level energy audits. get announced a $75 million Re-ToolOne commercial customer in the ing for Climate Change program Sydney CBD has even been able to designed to give small to medium cut $30,000 a year off their electricity sized manufacturers the chance to bill as a result of a Level 1 energy apply for grants between $10,000 and audit, a great return on a small $500,000 to help deliver more effiinvestment in our services. cient manufacturing processes.

The drive to reduce greenhouse As Thomas Edison once said emissions and improve the energy “Opportunity is missed by most peoefficiency of our buildings and busiple because it is dressed in overalls nesses will come of course with both and looks like work”. It’s time for the challenges and opportunities. And Control Industry to roll up its sleeves the process and control industry is a and get to work, there are opportunisector that is well positioned to gain ties at hand.

www.pacetoday.com.au

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SLI Sylvania n.v. Lighting’s next-generation production machines required high throughput, high accuracy, and a complex control system with integrated motion, vision, and laser control.

With the reliability of a PLC, the flexibility of custom hardware, and the performance of a PC, National Instruments Programmable Automation Controllers (PACs) provided the ideal integrated solution. Using LabVIEW graphical programming, Sylvania completed the project in just 25 percent of the budgeted development time.

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Technical literature

Never-ending innovation SUSTAINING CONTINUOUS INNOVATION THROUGH PROBLEM SOLVING ■ Stephen Armstrong ■ ISBN 978-0-8311-3275-0 ■ Industrial Press ■ $87 THIS book demonstrates how Problem Solving and Process Management are at the heart of continuous business transformation and renewal, with a step-by-step introduction on how to creatively re-engineer processes, sustain innovation and continually improve an enterprise through proven repetitive methods. Unlike other books on the subject it offers a practical step-by-step approach that includes the steps, the templates, and the metrics to keep it on track.

The tried and tested, practical 17step how to Problem Solving and Process Management methodology can be used in any business environment, and it includes numerous figures and examples of charts and documents used at each step of the process.

Senior managers, corporate managers, departmental managers, supervisors, engineers, technologists, scien-

■

Terry Wireman

■

ISBN 978-0-

THE second tome in Terry Wireman’s 10-volume Maintenance Strategy series, MRO Inventory and Purchasing, shows the reader how to develop an inventory and purchasing program for MRO spares and supplies as part of an overall strategy. Specifically, the text focuses on the importance of a well organised storage location and part inventory numbering system detailing to the reader the most effective ways to accomplish this goal.

The receiving and parts issues disciplines are discussed in detail with a focus on the value proposition for spare parts controls and justification of storeroom overhead. In addition, the appendixes provide examples of parts and detail storage conditions that can be utilized in developing or refining an inventory storage location. tists and trades people will all find it useful.

Both books are available direct from Elsevier Australia Customer Service, 1800 263 951 or customerserviceau@elsevier.com

10 June 2008 PACE

MRO INVENTORY AND PURCHASING 8311-3329-0 ■ Industrial Press ■ $66

GIVEAWAY To win a copy of one of these books, email miguel.gonzalez@reedbusiness. com.au and answer this question, what was Advantech’s General Manager Santo Gazzo’s first job? Please specify which book you would prefer.

www.pacetoday.com.au

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Behind the scenes

Not another brick on the wall A plant-wide implementation of advanced motor and drive solutions has allowed Austral Bricks to fast-track the development of its new brickworks, while providing flexibility for future expansion.

THE humble brick is literally the building-block and commissioned by leading design and manuof society. From the earliest sun-dried mud brick facturing engineers, J C Smale. to the first oven-fired clay-based variations, the A series of post-kiln conveyors, hoists and strapbrick has continued to be a vital component of ping machines are employed in the final producmost modern constructions. The modern brick tion stages. underpins the march of urban development across The clay-based brick mixture is prepared on site the globe. and extruded into columns. A ‘slug cutter’ Bricks today are manufactured in enormous machine located at the outlet of the extruder cuts quantities in a multitude of shapes, sizes, the columns into to manageable lengths or ‘slugs’, colours and textures. To accommodate this, equivalent to approximately 40 bricks in length. large-capacity brick manufacturing facilities are An off-bearing conveyor transfers the slugs on to being constructed and brought online at a rapid a two-slug-wide shuttle conveyor equipped with rate. side-to-side motion capabilities. Once two slugs Establishing – from the ground up – any high- are aligned next to each other on the shuttle convolume manufacturing facility that achieves opti- veyor, they are progressed to the holding conveymal production targets to stringent quality stan- or where they are marshalled before continuing on dards, can be challenging. This is all the more so to the infeed conveyor. when producing heavy products at high throughThe ‘slugs’ are then formed into individual put rates. Developing such greenfield manufactur- bricks as they are fed through a push-through cuting installations within a fast-track engineering ter. Here, a motor-driven mechanical arm pushes design/development timethe two slugs through a series frame calls for high levels of of stationary wires, cutting the The new Austral Bricks Wollert slugs into 80 (40 per slug) ingenuity.

A company that is leading individual bricks. An invertfacility is designed to produce the way in the design, coner/stacker machine picks up 85 million bricks per year, and struction and operation of an 80-brick stack, inverts such high-volume manufacthem, then stacks them on is considered one of the most turing applications is one of another 80 bricks to form a resource-efficient plants in the 160-brick stack.

Australia’s foremost clay product manufacturers, AusThe 160-brick stacks are world, with precision tral Bricks. placed on a wide-belt conveyautomation and advanced With an Australia-wide netor where they are indexed to a work of quarries, brickworks stationary barrier. Here, a robotic technologies and distribution outlets, Austransfer carriage and hoist tral Bricks produces an extenpicks up each 160-brick stack sive range of clay bricks and pavers, as well as ter- and places them on one of two setting conveyors. racotta floor and roof tiles, for the Australian and The stacks are then indexed to a pick-up position overseas markets. where a robot transfers them to the kiln cars, When Austral Bricks established its new brick- which deliver the bricks to the gas-fired kilns. works in the northern Melbourne suburb of Wollert in Victoria, the company implemented a Building the foundations With almost all motion processes at the Wollert sophisticated materials handling system, founded on the latest motor and drive technologies from brickworks requiring geared motors and, in many cases, electronic drive control, Austral Bricks drives solutions group, SEW-Eurodrive. chose to implement SEW-Eurodrive’s drive soluBrickworks inner-workings tions plant-wide.

Located near abundant clay and shale reserves, All of the motor-driven machinery at the new the new Austral Bricks Wollert facility is designed brickworks relies on SEW-Eurodrive standard and to produce 85 million bricks per year, and is con- servo gear motors. Each is paired with one of sidered one of the most resource-efficient plants in the company’s electronic drive solutions – either the world. The Wollert brickworks features the the MOVITRAC 07 standard inverter, or latest in materials handling systems, underpinned MOVIDRIVE ‘B’ application inverter. All elecby precision automation and advanced robotic tronic drives are linked to programmable logic technologies. controllers (PLCs) via a plant-wide DeviceNet The ‘pre-kiln’ process predominantly comprises communications network. a number of purpose-built machine packages, cusThe MOVITRAC 07 family of general-purpose tomised to Austral Bricks’ manufacturing require- frequency inverters is designed to support simple ments. Most of the pre-kiln machine packages at ‘every day’ variable speed drive applications. The the Wollert facility were designed, manufactured MOVIDRIVE ‘B’ application inverter offers man12 June 2008 PACE

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Behind the scenes ufacturers optimal versatility and processing power for standard variable speed drives and all the way up to sophisticated positioning and synchronous applications.

“At Austral Bricks, we can’t afford production stoppages, and as such, require robust drive systems we can rely on,” says Austral Bricks group engineering and development manager, David Bannister. “SEW-Eurodrive provided us with reliable complete drive systems capable of accurate positioning and speed control.”

The MOVITRAC 07 frequency inverter is used to provide reliable open-loop speed control on many of the conveying applications. “It offers a smooth ramp-up/ramp-down to ensure that the bricks don’t topple,” says Bannister. “This is crucial, both from an operational and safety perspective.”

More sophisticated drive applications that demanded precise positioning were achieved using the MOVIDRIVE ‘B’ application inverter.

The MOVIDRIVE ‘B’ was, according to, an optimal choice for the Wollert facility. “At the brickworks there was a need for a reliable application inverter that could support advanced functions, such as precision servo positioning. The MOVIDRIVE ‘B’ was a natural choice,” says SEW-Eurodrive Applications Engineer, Spiro Limberakis.

This sentiment is shared by JC Smale project engineer, Peter Rohrmann, “The multi-mode controller card provides high levels of flexibility,” he says. “It permits the unit to support a broad range of industrial applications, from the very basic control of an asynchronous motor in V/F operating mode, through to precision dynamic control of servo motors.”

According to Bannister, the integrated IPOS positioning and sequence control is vital to the manufacturing process at the Wollert brickworks.

“The IPOS control with encoder feedback is ideal for accurately positioning the bricks in the marshalling areas and aligning the brick stacks prior to hoisting,” says Bannister. “The IPOS functionality meant that we could avoid the use of proximity switch-based positioning systems, which must be continually maintained and manually adjusted.”

Further flexibility is achieved via the control network architecture in place at Austral Bricks.

“Parameters for all of the MOVIDRIVE ‘B’s can set and adjusted via the on site PLCs,” says Bannister. “This is a real time-saver, as it means programming, system maintenance and troubleshooting can be performed across the DeviceNet network.”

Time on their side

The MOVIDRIVE ‘B’, strong as a brick

According to Rohrmann, installation, set-up and programming couldn’t have been more straightforward. “Our job was made easier,” he says.

“The SEW gear is extremely compact and easy to install. This simplified installation of the drive applications located in the space-limited portions of the manufacturing process.”

The MOVIDRIVE ‘B’s and MOVITRAC 07s are interfaced with the site’s PLCs, which in turn provide central, single-point configurable control of all motion applications.

“Drive configuration was easy, as we weren’t locked into using proprietary code. This was a real time saver, as we were able to write our own code for the motion applications,” says Rohmann.

“The gear played a major part in allowing us to bring the new Wollert brickworks online sooner.”

According to Bannister, SEW’s substantial stock of spare-parts and 24-hour around-the-clock service capabilities, positions the company as Australia’s most dependable drive solutions provider.

“Here at Austral Bricks, we have come to rely on these integrated drive solutions. We have deployed their gear exclusively at a number of our facilities around Australia,” says Bannister.

“Their ability to supply total project lifecycle support in addition to advanced drive technologies, sets them apart. Being able to source the complete end-to-end drive package and receive ongoing after-sales support from a single supplier is invaluable.”

With the Wollert brickworks online on schedule, Austral Bricks is looking to the future. “The drive solutions in place at the new facility provide us with high levels of operational flexibility and allow for system expansion,” says Bannister.

“SEW has helped us lay the foundations to provide Australian industry with locally made clay building products now, and as the range is expanded in the future.”

Pty Ltd

www.pacetoday.com.au

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In focus: Environment and sustainability

Going green … again

Concerns about energy efficiency and environmental practices are back and gaining momentum, so automation vendors and their customers are helping ensure that manufacturing is one of the greenest sectors of the economy.

JEANINE KATZEL

FEW would disagree. The world is going green.

Whether through energy efficiency, environmental measures, safety and health practices, or all of the above, consumers and manufacturers alike are striving to earn the label “green.”

Thirty-plus years ago, similar efforts were underway. Oil shortages, Earth Day, recycling, energy management systems, all surged to the fore – then faded. Now they’re back.

Technological advances have made possible and desirable: the monitoring and measuring, the automation and controls that are critical to becoming and remaining energy efficient and environmentally friendly. Beyond that, however, a more serious and sustainable atmosphere pervades the 2008 movement to “go green”: consumer pressure, growing global demand for finite resources and knowledge advances are driving manufacturers to develop more efficient products and processes, and implement more responsible ways of operating.

Why green? Why now?

“This time, I think we have a perfect convergence of concerns about climate change and high energy prices to drive an interest in sustainability,” says John White, energy management and environmental solutions manager for Eaton Corp.

Most manufacturers agree.

“Early adopters who address green initiatives and become more socially responsible will find themselves at a competitive advantage,” says Rod Ellsworth, vice president of business solutions consulting and enterprise asset management at Infor. “Products will be better received and their companies will be more financially viable and flexible.” Info’s enterprise software supports various manufacturers’ green initiatives.

14 June 2008 PACE

Today’s moves to become more energy efficient and environmentally conscious differ from previous efforts largely because of the drivers that are fuelling it. Brandon Henning, global industry manager, food and beverage, GE Fanuc Intelligent Platforms, cites three primary reasons the current green movement will hold and grow. First, he says, “major retailers are demanding that the manufacturers they buy from be greener … and that they prove it. Companies must be green if they are going to continue to sell to large retailers, and retailers are not flexible about compliance. Merchants such as Wal-Mart in the USA audit how much energy, water, and other resources a supplier uses and vendors need to show reductions year after year.”

Second, sustainability and energy efficiency make good business sense, because they drive costs out of the manufacturing process. “As plants evaluate ways to operate more effectively, they also are getting smarter about it. If done correctly, the benefits of efficiency efforts are greater than the costs,” says Henning. “Investments in controls, automation equipment, production management systems, like GE Fanuc Plant Applications and ERP systems, come together to improve overall effectiveness.”

Third, resources are becoming scarce. “Especially in industries such as food and beverage, changing weather patterns and climates affect the availability of raw materials,” says Henning.

“Companies are looking at their long-term impact on the environment and their ability to acquire the raw materials they need.”

Practicing green manufacturing Green initiatives and sustainability pervade the workings of many major manufacturers’ operations today. If yours is not among them, there are www.pacetoday.com.au

PACE_JUN08_P15 Page 2 27/5/08 1:53 PM

good reasons why it is time to start moving in that direction.

Most manufacturers approach the move to green from two angles: by implementing measures within their organisations, and by introducing environmentally friendly measures into their products for outreach to customers. Many have launched specific green initiatives and other programs. Monitoring and reporting functions are integral to nearly every effort, and harnessing the advantages of advanced automation and controls technology and software is common. While by no means comprehensive, here is look at a few such programs from automation and controls vendors who are themselves manufacturers.

Among manufacturers’ green initiatives is one from Freescale, maker of custom chip sets and embedded control components. Freescale’s program includes steps to conserve resources in its own operation and to measure that it has had an impact on the industries it deals with. “In 2001,” says Paul Ballentine, company director of wireless strategy and champion of its sustainability efforts, “we set baseline guidelines for energy and resource use and goals for reducing that use. We established five measurable metrics: non-hazardous waste generation; hazardous waste generation; greenhouse gas emissions; energy consumption; and water consumption. Every facility manager worldwide is responsible for measuring and tracking these factors and reporting levels to a central department.”

In addition to reducing the amount of energy it consumes in making its products, the company has also cut the amount of energy used by its products. Says Ballentine, “We are concentrating on making Internet controllers that are more ener-

How green are you?

Is your company taking any significant environmental initiatives? If the answer is yes, we’d like to hear from you.

Email us at pace@pacetoday.com.au

gy efficient and lower in power consumption, which benefits the customer. This equipment generates a lot of heat. Electricity is needed to run the chip and to cool the room. More efficient chips help out in both ways.”

Green efforts at Siemens Energy & Automation have taken the form of applying controls for efficiency in industry overall, and in the alternative fuels industry in particular. The company has worked with biofuels operations for a long time, with a number of installations using its automation and controls systems to help ensure quality and safety. Says Don Mack, the company’s PAS biofuels initiative lead, “We need to be better caretakers than we have been in the past. The energy bill signed recently increased mandates for ethanol and biodiesel production, and required vehicles increase fuel economy and reduce emissions.

Using alternative fuels can help lower emissions and have a positive effect on the environment.”

The formalised green program launched by Opto 22 about two years ago focuses on internal conservation and awareness, as well on interaction with its customers. “First and foremost in any

green effort,” suggests Benson Hougland, Opto 22 vice president, “should be self-examination. We looked at what we could do on the manufacturing floor. We increased our recycling efforts and also changed some of our processes to be more efficient.” The company’s efforts seek to leverage its own technology. “We connected systems using our own SNAP PACs,” explains Hougland, “giving us ready made monitoring and control.”

Rockwell Automation finds the term “green” too limiting, labelling its move to greater efficiency as “sustainable production.” John Nesi, vice president of market development at Rockwell Automation, says sustainable production is a broader social responsibility issue that “involves aspects of climate change, safety, energy efficiency, and environmental friendliness, and is the only long-term solution to overcoming rising energy, raw material, workers compensation, lost worker productivity, and product liability costs. Sustainable production also requires both information and control technologies. For example, a plant needs to be able to equip a smokestack to monitor it effectively and determine whether or not it’s burning cleanly. This type of regulation can now be done with expert system software tools and predictive modelling and control techniques.”

Justifying the efforts The desire to be green is spawning new and modified products. Says Eaton’s White: “We make a UPS for use in large data centres that uses less power than a traditional UPS to help the customer manage energy more efficiently, and requires 80% less energy to produce than it did just a few years ago. In another example, our medium-voltage (Continued on page 16)

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In focus: Environment and sustainability

16 June 2008 PACE

(Continued from page 15)

Support from around the world

switchgear does not use SF 6 (sulfur hexafluoride), a potent greenhouse gas with a global warming impact 23,900 times greater than CO2.”

Green practices have led Schneider Electric to deploy more integrated solutions to optimise capital and operating expenditures. Says Cassie Quaintance, the company’s energy market segment manager, “The plant infrastructure and factory floor used to be independent organisations.

Now both share common energy efficiency goals.

By integrating our energy management system, manufacturing execution, and batch management software – three systems that, in recent years, would have been considered distinct and managed by separate organisations – and by allowing the exchange of data and parameters, we enable organisations to drive towards their overall energy efficiency goals. By integrating these systems, and by adding features and functionality to existing solutions, we are bringing new efficiencies to the plant infrastructure and the factory floor.”

Honeywell is heavily involved in green initiatives, both internally and in its outreach to customers.

More than half of its solutions are aimed at lowering production costs or reducing energy consumption. “We’re helping people identify energy efficiency opportunities; make a business case for those projects to get approval; and apply the technology, implement the solutions, and evaluate the results,” says Brendan Sheehan, senior marketing manager, process industries, Honeywell Process Solutions. Among recent efforts was the installation of a DCS and advanced control system in a large pulp-and-paper mill that led to a savings of about 2% in energy consumption or about $1 million annually. “Overall, the company was able to consume fewer resources per ton of paper produced – a compelling business case for the implementation of efficiency solutions,” says Sheehan.

Justifying those environmental and energy conservation projects admittedly can be an issue.

“Sometimes there are good business reasons for these changes,” says Freescale’s Ballentine.

“Installing a better boiler or more efficient equipment generally has a solid financial payback. Other times, a measure is just the right thing to do. Any for-profit corporation needs to balance those measures. There are always tradeoffs.”

But it is a fallacy that green efforts will add to the cost of manufacturing, stresses Infor’s Ellsworth. “Such measures are more likely to reduce the costs of making these products. Energy is probably the single largest O&M [operations and maintenance] expense in the manufacture of a product. If a company can operate and maintain its assets at less energy cost and consumption than previously, they not only conserve energy, they generate fewer emissions and reduce their carbon footprint per product produced as well.”

Ellsworth’s company now factors energy consumption and efficiency into all the ongoing O&M of an asset to help set standards for quality, availability, and capacity at the least energy cost.

By all appearances, green is going global, with virtually no country or culture not interested in sustainability. Eaton’s White points out, “We’re getting inquiries from our Middle East counterparts about green buildings. Developing cities like Dubai and Abu Dhabi are committing to use LEED practices.” (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, or LEED, is an environmental rating system developed by the U.S. Green Building Council.)

Admittedly, however, the focus and extent of the interest in energy efficiency and reduced greenhouse gas emissions varies from region to region around the world.

The Chinese government has stated that it aims to quadruple GDP by 2020, while only doubling energy use for the same period. This increase in energy efficiency will be challenging, points out Honeywell’s Sheehan. “It may be a competing requirement with increasing production that has seen energy in China increasing faster than GDP in recent years,” he explains. “China has several key energy saving processes outlined in its 2004 plan. These include coal-fired industrial boiler projects, cogeneration projects, alternative fuel vehicles and high efficiency motors, energy efficient lighting, and others.”

According to Rockwell’s Nesi, U.S.-based global companies are among the first to be proactive. “Many are looking at their global carbon footprints and ways to

apply reduction measures across their facilities worldwide.

Europe is already conscientious about these issues and limits industrial emissions. However, observes Honeywell’s Sheehan, “Europe tends to be more focused on reducing emissions because there is a tax associated with exceeding certain limits.”

Building a greener future European-based Schneider submits sustainability reports to the European Union each year. As a result, it has benchmarked all energy and water use at all facilities globally since 2004. “We’re able to benchmark against our energy use and track our progress in reducing our impact on the environment,” says Quaintance. “One thing I like about tracking greenhouse gas emissions or measuring a carbon footprint is that it makes a company’s environmental impact very clear. It’s not greenwashing [making a green statement but having nothing with which to back it up].”

Most everyone agrees more legislation is likely over time. “Consumers expect and demand certain quality levels be met, says GE Fanuc’s Mike Yost, product marketing manager for production management software. “They will drive retailers’ actions, which in turn will affect the shop floor and influence legislation. When there is need in the consumer ranks, there is the potential for government involvement.”

In the opinion of Rockwell Automation’s Nesi, many manufacturers are looking for standards to (Continued on page 18) www.pacetoday.com.au

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Š 2006 Swagelok Company

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Did you know that Swagelok supplies thousands of other quality fluid system products and subassemblies to a wide range of industries? From tube fittings, tubing, and valves to pressure measurement and control devices; regulators, transducers, and gauges, Swagelok offers the instrumentation solutions you need. With Swagelok you also get global support, procurement services, engineered to order products, product training, seminars, and more.

To find the solutions you need to configure your ideal fluid system, contact your nearby authorized Swagelok sales and service center or visit us at www.swagelok.com.

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In focus: Environment and sustainability (Continued from page 16)

which they might comply and/or benchmarks against which to measure their operations. “The processes manufacturers want to mitigate require measurement and recording. Many of these levels are not yet mandated by law, but manufacturers see it coming. To get ahead in a regulatory environment, they are striving to establish their own standards now.”

Says Memphis Biofuels’ Ken Arnold, “I don’t see oil prices retreating, and the impetus on Capitol Hill is sufficient to make sure incentives and mandates stay in place to keep the biofuels industry moving forward.”

Until utilities can provide other types of fuels, says Infor’s Ellsworth – and that will take a significant amount of time – manufacturers will have to use carbon- or fossil-based fuels and conserve through demand-side programs that help users reduce consumption sufficiently to keep carbon emissions at least holding steady. He acknowl-

edges that efforts must continue in the development of such alternative energy sources as wind farms, fuel cells, and perhaps even nuclear, as well.

Companies agree that green is not solely a compliance or corporate responsibility issue; it’s good business. It’s more profitable business. Energy prices are only a small part of the equation, according to Rockwell Automation’s Nesi.

“Companies that can demonstrate sustainable production stand to gain a competitive advantage long term,” says Nesi. “Investors are seeking out companies that are socially responsible, while at the same time investment groups are seeking to identify companies with strong sustainability practices as preferred investment options. Someday, oil prices may drop, but by then a whole group of new alternative energy development projects will have sprung up. The U.S. government is funding ethanol, hydrogen, and fuel cell development projects, and that investment is not likely to stop.”

Programs help others turn green A number of automation suppliers have developed programs for encouraging green activities by their customers and for making their own operations more environmentally friendly. A few are listed here.

Design Challenge – Freescale Semiconductor. This global contest awards $61,000 in prize money for the best green design. It centers on green products and works in conjunction with Freescale’s regional developer conferences. Ten finalists and one winner per region will be selected at each conference. From among regional winners, one global winner will be selected. Criteria include using Freescale products and achieving a green benefit, such as a more efficient version of an existing product or a method that conserves a resource.

Freescale is also a platinum sponsor of Challenge X: Crossover to Sustainable Mobility, an automotive engineering competition promoting fuel efficiency and reduced emissions. www.freescale.com Green Grant Program – Opto 22. Program provides free Opto 22 hardware, typically PACs (programmable automation controllers), and some engineering support to initiate a green-based effort. Each request is evaluated on its own merit. Recipients have no obligations to Opto 22. www.opto22.com Vision Project – Eaton Corp. Internal program focuses on reducing corporate greenhouse gas emissions 18% by 2012. The Vision Project also includes collaboration with CABA (Continental Automated Buildings Association) and Carnegie-Mellon University, to help Eaton document efforts to “green” its manufacturing facilities.

Eaton hopes its efforts may lead to the development of a prescriptive for making an industrial facility green, following the U.S. Green Building Council’s LEED rating criteria for buildings. www.eaton.com/greenbuildings Energy Action Plan – Schneider Electric. EAP examines Schneider’s manufacturing processes and energy use at all facilities globally. It focuses on development of products and technologies that enable customers to reduce energy consumption. Over the last three years, the program has saved some $3.7 million and reduced energy consumption about 12% per production site employee. www.us.schneider-electric.com Ecomagination – General Electric. Ecomagination, or imagination at work, is General Electric’s corporate commitment to environmental responsibility. The program puts into practice GE’s belief that financial and environmental performance can work together to drive company growth, while taking on some of the world’s biggest challenges. It supports the company’s commitment to products and services that are economically advantageous and ecologically sound. www.gefanuc.com McKinsey & Co. report: Reducing U.S. Greenhouse Gas Emissions – Honeywell. Among Honeywell’s major green initiatives has been to underwrite the McKinsey report, which determined that a reduction equivalent to 600 megatons of CO2 could be achieved through a variety of abatement options. Read the report at www.mckinsey.com/clientservice/ccsi/greenhousegas.asp.

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In focus: Fluid handling

Calculating flow Valve size often is described by the nominal size of the end connections, but a more important measure is the flow that the valve can provide. Determining flow through a valve can be simple.

FLOW can be estimated well enough to select a valve size – easily, and without complicated calculations. When selecting a product, the total system design must be considered to ensure safe, trouble-free performance. Function, material compatibility, adequate ratings, proper installation, operation, and maintenance are the responsibilities of the system designer and user.

Flow calculation principles The principles of flow calculations are illustrated by the common orifice flow meter (Fig. 1). We need to know only the size and shape of the orifice, the diameter of the pipe, and the fluid density. With that information, we can calculate the flow rate for any value of pressure drop across the orifice (the difference between inlet and outlet pressures).

For a valve, we also need to know the pressure drop and the fluid density. But

in addition to the dimensions of pipe diameter and orifice size, we need to know all the valve passage dimensions and all the changes in size and direction of flow through the valve.

However, rather than doing complex calculations, we use the valve flow coefficient, which combines the effects of all the flow restrictions in the valve into a single number (Fig. 2).

Valve manufacturers determine the valve flow coefficient by testing the valve with water at several flow rates, using a standard test method2 devel-

Figure 2. Calculating the flow rate through a valve is much more complex. The valve flow coefficient (Cv) takes into account all the dimensions and other factors – including size and direction changes – that affect fluid flow.

Figure 1. The flow rate through a fixed orifice can be calculated from the meter dimensions of pipe diameter and orifice size and shape.

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In focus: Fluid handling (Continued from page 19)

Figure 3. Valve manufacturers determine flow coefficients by testing the valve with water using a standard ISA test method.

oped by the Instrument Society of America for control valves and now used widely for all valves. Flow tests are done in a straight piping system of the same size as the valve, so that the effects of fittings and piping size changes are not included (Fig. 3).

Liquid flow Because liquids are incompressible fluids, their flow rate depends only on the difference between the inlet and outlet pressures (p, pressure drop). The flow is the same whether the system pressure is low or high, so long as the difference between the inlet and outlet pressures is the same. This equation shows the relationship:

Gas flow Gas flow calculations are slightly more complex, because gases are compressible fluids whose density changes with pressure. In addition, there are two conditions that must be considered – low pressure drop flow and high pressure drop flow.

This equation applies when there is low pressure drop flow – outlet pressure (p2) is greater than one half of inlet pressure (p1): When outlet pressure (p2) is less than half of inlet pressure (p1) – high pressure drop – any further decrease in outlet pressure does not increase the flow because the gas has reached sonic velocity at the orifice, and it cannot break that “sound barrier.”

The equation for high pressure drop flow is simpler because it depends only on inlet pressure and temperature, valve flow coefficient, and specific gravity of the gas:

Effects of specific gravity The flow equations include the variables Gf and Gg – liquid specific gravity and gas specific gravity – which are the density of the fluid compared to the density of water (for liquids) or air (for gases).

However, specific gravity is not accounted for in the graphs, so a correction factor must be applied, which includes the square root of G. Tak20 June 2008 PACE

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ing the square root reduces the effect and brings the value much closer to that of water or air, 1.0.

For example, the specific gravity of sulfuric acid is 80% higher than that of water, yet it changes flow by just 34%. The specific gravity of ether is 26% lower than that of water, yet it changes flow by only 14%.

Figure 4 shows how the significance of speFigure 4. For most common liquids, the effect of specific gravity on flow is less than 10%. Also, cific gravity on liquid most high-density liquids such as concentrated acids and bases usually are diluted in water and flow is diminished by – consequently – the specific gravity of the mixtures is much closer to that of water than to that of the pure liquid. taking its square root.

Only if the specific gravity of the liquid is very low or very high will the flow change by more than 10% from that of water.

The effect of specific gravity on gases is similar. For example, the specific gravity of hydrogen is 93% lower than that of air, but it changes flow by just 74%. Carbon dioxide has a specific gravity 53% higher than that of air, yet it changes flow by only 24%.

Only gases with very low or very high specific gravity change the flow by more than 10% from that of air. Figure 5 shows how the effect of specific gravity on gas flow is reduced by use of the square root.

Effects of temperature Temperature usually is ignored in liquid flow calculations because its effect is too small. Temperature has a greater Figure 5. For common gases, the specific gravity of the gas changes flow by less than 10% from effect on gas flow calcuthat of air. And just as with liquids, gases with exceptionally high or low densities often are mixed lations, because gas volwith a carrier gas such as nitrogen, so that the specific gravity of the mixture is close to that of air. ume expands with higher temperature and contracts with lower temperature. But – similar to specific gravity – temperature affects flow by only a square-root factor. For systems that operate between –40°F (–40°C) and +212°F (+100°C), the correction factor is only +12 to –11%.

Figure 6 shows the effect of temperature on volumetric flow over a broad range of temperatures. The plus-orminus 10% range covers the usual operating temperatures of most common applications.

Other services What about viscous liquids, slurries, or boiling and flashing liquids? Suppose vapours, steam, and liquefied gases are used? How are valves sized for these other services?

The ISA standards S75.01 and S75.02 conFigure 6. Many systems operate in the range –40°C (–40°F) to +100°C (+212°F). Within this range, temperature changes affect flow by little more than 10%. tain a complete set of formulas for sizing valves that will be used in a variety of special services, along with a description of flow capacity test principles and procedures.

Commentary provided by the Swagelok Company. www.pacetoday.com.au

PACE June 2008 21

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IN CONVERSATION WITH: The Advantech Australia team

The industrial Lego of automation Advantech Australia celebrates 25 years of its ePlatform products and services. Santo Gazzo, General Manager; Andrew Deighton, Technical Manager; and Damian Trubiano, Sales Engineer, explain how their products can be like a LEGO for legacy systems.

This year marks the company’s global anniversary, but it hasn’t been around that long in Australia. What is the local history of the company?

Santo Gazzo: In 1989 I joined a company called Priority Electronics.

The following year we started selling Advantech products, and their range was so good for us that it became 80% of our business. In 2001, Advantech made a very good offer to the then owner of the business and acquired the operations, and so Advantech Australia was born. It was a very good marriage combining our people resources and the market presence with Advantech’s global resources. Since then, the business has grown 190%, and looking at our first quarter figures for 2008 we are growing at a rate of 18%. We expect that number to increase with many major projects in the pipeline. Much of this growth this year can be attributed to the new GIE global restructuring which is changing how we do business – opening up our worldwide offices to a global set of resources, in marketing, manufacturing and business support services.

How would you introduce Advantech to someone who doesn’t know it?

SG: When you look at our products you’ll see that we’re not in the same market as, for example, Siemens. We don’t sell PLCs, although we do offer products that, similarly to PLCs, can be used for monitoring at a much cheaper cost. We also have legacy products that help connect those vendors together. If you have a serial link PLC and you need to connect it back into a networked system, we can provide the interface linking the old with

PERSONAL PROFILE

Santo Gazzo

Andrew Deighton and Damian Trubiano

the new if you like. You can look at it like a LEGO system, where we provide those little bits and pieces to help you put it all together.

Damian Trubiano: Another important point is the longevity of our products; we can offer a minimum of three to five years on any product that has been released.

SG: Our company is predominantly a PC-based manufacturer of industrial PCs. If you put a desktop computer in an industrial environment, not only will it be affected by the environment, but if you run specialised software and the computer fails, you might have to do some redevelopment.

We can offer PC continuity of supply, because our head office works directly with Intel, who determines which processors they’ll retain for the

industrial market and guarantee supply to us for at least five years. Knowing which processors will be available, we design our new generation products around them. That is why we could be about six months behind the latest processor boards, however more user friendly, because Intel needs to work out which ones they’ll keep so we can sit down and design the next generation boards.

What trends affect your offering?

Andrew Deighton: We have many customers that use legacy hardware because they follow an ‘if it’s not broken, don’t fix it’ kind of approach.

Advantech needs to allow for legacy hardware, making sure new technologies can interface with older technologies; its all about compatability.

Santo Gazzo’s first job was riding his bike to deliver the Sunday Observer newspaper, before moving on to an Electrical apprenticeship.

Andrew Deighton began working for Advantech Australia after completing his Associate Diploma of Electronic Engineering. Starting off as a storeman and eventually working his way up to Technical Manager, he enjoys new challenges. Being a keen aviation buff since childhood, he now holds a private pilot license, and flying is one of the thins he looks forward to after a tough week at work.

Damian Trubiano started at Advantech three years ago, making the move from Electronic Design to Sales. He completed a Bachelor of Engineering (Electronic). He previously worked as a design engineer for private companies, and as a research associate for universities. He follows his beloved Melbourne Demons.

The trend is for people to network their existing products, but also incorporate new technologies as needed.

For example, we supply bus to serial converters because there are PLCs out there running off serial ports, and replacing them implies a huge cost.

That’s where the converters come in handy, catering to all types of legacy

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products. This way, the customer doesn’t need to redo a complete solution that might cost $50,000; they can get a $200 product to get them past the hurdle, solve the problem, and they can plan their major upgrades for the future in a timely and economically viable way.

SG: And there’s a trend that you see in many markets, a requirement to be connected to what we call the eWorld.

Companies and products connect via worldwide databases/networks and there is an enormous demand for realtime information from anywhere around the planet. Currently we supply to a company that uses our products in tractors, which pick up the harvest and send information about quality and quantity back to a website in real-time, where clients will be able to bid on the product that’s just been picked out of the ground.

Your top markets are medical, transport and industrial automation. How diverse are the applications?

DT: We have a broad base of system integrators that incorporate our products into areas like factories or mining, where our AAU hardware is being used to monitor underground activities and manage vehicle fleets via wireless communications. The Australian Water company is using UNOs and ADAMs to suck up ground water for use in dams, while agriculture compa-

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COMPANY PROFILE Founded in 1983, Advantech offers a comprehensive product range, customer-centric design services, and an extensive global network. They are developers and manufacturers of high-performance computing platforms, with integration hardware, software, customer-centric design services, global logistics support and industry-leading front as well as back office ebusiness infrastructure. Their products serve industries such as automotive, mining, agriculture, utilities, marine, industrial automation, building and construction, security, medical, defence, rail and road logistics. They employ 24 staff in Melbourne and Sydney, and a total of 3400 staff in 36 cities and 18 countries. nies use a GPS computer system for harvesting, guiding the tractors and monitoring the fertilizer.

SG: We have industrial computers running at every train station in Melbourne, collecting and relaying ticketing information back to the command centre in the CBD, and also at fire sta-

tions in Sydney, where they automatically switch off any gas/electric appliances when the firemen leave the building. Being an emergency, they sometimes leave things on, and they surely don’t want to return to a burning depot!

What solutions do you have for industrial automation and mining?

SG: Our main offering consists of Panel PC for Human Machine Interface, and remote I/Os for monitoring and controlling. Mining is an interesting case for us because we don’t sell intrinsically safe products, but we have the ARK unit, a very compact, fanless computer system, which is used to monitor fleets of mining trucks and other vehicles at a mine.

Monitoring can increase efficiency, and we’re finding many more uses for these products in that sector. For equipment manufacturers, we have our System on Module (SOM), a PC system board that is plugged into customer’s system boards. The main idea is its interchangeability; it keeps down the cost and provides a wide range of solutions for the customer. It’s very small, about the size of a credit card.

How do you cater to specific needs?

DT: DTOS is our Design To Order Service for industrial boards and system platform; a one stop solution for the customer, so they don’t have to

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In focus: SCADA

Transforming Legacy HMI/SCADA Systems When planning improvements to a legacy HMI/SCADA system, the option of migration to a more advanced system needs to be considered to ensure that the functionality and usability of the system meets expectations and changing demands of the business.

EINSTEIN said: “Significant problems cannot be solved at the same level of thinking with which we created them.” As businesses expand, operational infrastructure grows and ages. Consequently, as companies focus on growth, it may be time to acknowledge that tools which were once solutions have now become sources of problems in themselves.

The dilemma of a Plant Operations Manager highlights this scenario well: ■ The SCADA system, that ten years ago met the process control needs of the operations, is now unable to keep in step with the pace of expansion of the total business.

■ This legacy system is now unable to meet and address the increasingly stringent safety/security/ regulatory reporting requirements of today.

■ Yesterday’s productivity benchmarks have been raised and senior management is aggressively seeking reduced energy/infrastructure costs and improved incidence management.

■ Driven by competitive pressures, the increased demand from senior management for greater plant floor visibility is also showing up major gaps in the control system’s reporting functions.

■ When ageing hardware components of the legacy system have to be replaced (be they PLCs, RTUs, CPUs or even PCs), the ripple effect on the communications and the software systems is significant and at times calls for changes to both communications and software.

■ Eventually the cost of maintaining the legacy system (labour, training, spares, downtime etc) as well as the opportunity cost (lack of synergies with business systems and reduced leverage of new analysis techniques) makes the legacy SCADA system ‘part of the problem.’

While the need for improvements is felt, tangible barriers to moving from the old to the new still

exist. Various industry estimates place the value of legacy process control systems, which have reached the end of their realistic life cycle, in excess of US$60 billion globally. The barriers that have contributed to creating this scenario include: ■ Fear of the unknown: Users who do not want to move out of their comfort zone tend to imagine the worst in change. Typical questions brought up in the discussion are: “What if the new system does not do the job?”, “Has the time really come for a change?”, “If it is not broken, why fix it?”

■ Fear of losing control/exclusivity: Users who have had exclusive rights or control over a legacy system may fear ‘losing out’ if there is a move to a more sophisticated, open and transparent system.

■ Fear of ‘collateral damage’: Talk of improved process control brings with it the usually unsupported concern over potential job losses; even if the new system is being brought in to keep in step with increased production or expanded operations.

■ Inability to capture and quantify all potential benefits: If a company’s business processes and systems themselves are in need of streamlining, it becomes even more difficult to create the business case for a move up the technology path. In the case of HMI/SCADA, often strategic benefits are hardest to capture when quantifying benefits.

■ Inability to get all users and stakeholders to provide synergistic input: The success of any move away from legacy control systems can only be guaranteed if all users and stakeholders (operators, managers, system integrators, senior management etc) are able to share needs, priorities, feedback and value perception; so that the calculated ROI truly reflects the benefit to the firm, as well as leads to action.

While proactive companies recognise that such barriers must be crossed, they also see the huge risk in not taking that step forward to more advanced performance-enhancing systems.

What do I risk if I do not solve legacy system issues?

■ Loss in productivity due to potential downtime ■ Loss in revenues due to control system limitations in keeping up with growing production, reduced leverage on energy savings and infrastructure cost savings, reduced ability to use modern analytical techniques etc ■ Cost of maintenance of the system becomes prohibitive and total cost of ownership

Failure rate/cost/risk curve versus value curve across life cycle www.pacetoday.com.au

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In focus: SCADA (Continued from page 27)

rises beyond previously estimated thresholds ■ System components not manufactured any more or spares availability is a challenge ■ Service/support not offered for older versions ■ Reduced ability to link with modern business systems (ERP, MES, SCM etc) ■ Reduced ability to comply with reporting requirements in safety/security/regulatory domains ■ Reduced ability to respond effectively to incidents on the plant floor ■ Reduced flexibility to grow the control system with changing operational needs (expansion in production or number of locations); especially if locked in with a proprietary legacy system Fortunately, new technologies and solutions from the process control industry can help remedy the situation. In terms of software alone, the total global SCADA software market is worth around US$700 million today; with growth in excess of 10 percent per annum.

But how does one go about leveraging software solutions and making the necessary improvements?

How do I patch an old garment with a new piece of cloth?

The options are many:

Cost/risk versus value/benefit

Hot fixes are minor changes; typically a simple replacement of a file to fix a single bug. Low risk, but also, relatively little long term value (unless it solves a problem in a mission-critical process).

Service packs are minor upgrades to the software and contain a number of hot fixes. Low risk, but here again, relatively low long term value, although it should make your system more stable.

Upgrades provide users the comfort of staying in familiar territory, with the benefit of an improved suite of features. Companies that want their GUIs looking the same and do not relish the idea of retraining operators find much merit in simply ‘stepping up’ to step forward.

Perfectly logical, when your SCADA supplier also has a clear and sustainable development path for its suite of products. Higher risk than a mere service pack, but significantly higher value in the bargain.

Is an upgrade the best way forward?

The options discussed above appear clear in their risk-value position, and needless to say, each is adopted by users based on the need, context and priorities of the company.

Of the three, upgrades deliver most value in improving the organisation’s leverage of new technology. Having said that, a few points must necessarily be introduced now, to muddy the waters: ■ When faced with a need to improve the performance of their SCADA system, companies typically start with the options available with their existing SCADA vendor. Again, a sensible place to start, as long as the investigation does not stop with the incumbent vendor. In general, companies tend to start with the product and work back to their needs. Instead, companies would do well to ‘begin with the end in mind’ i.e. start with their changed needs, derive their new performance requirements and then widen the horizon to consider all potential solutions on offer.

Therefore, a straightforward upgrade of the existing system may not be the only way forward. For instance, questions that need to be asked and answered include: Is the existing system best suited for the needs of the organisation? Were standards used for the existing system (and if the system is across multiple

28 June 2008 PACE

installations, are the standards uniform across all sites?) What other solutions does the industry offer which address my requirements?

■ Apart from the obvious costs of purchasing new hardware and software for upgrades, companies tend to overlook the fact that upgrades necessitate a full testing of the upgraded system; a significant cost component that must be factored in when system ROI is calculated.

■ Most importantly, not all vendors support early versions of their software and most do not have convenient and effective conversion tools to take old versions up the upgrade path.

■ For some very old systems, upgrade options are simply unavailable or difficult to achieve if at all.

■ To upgrade a legacy system, extensive documentation of the system is required. If such documentation is unavailable or inadequate, time spent on documentation for upgrade purposes can be quite high.

■ It is often the case that operators who maintained the legacy system have left the company, and no one else knows how to fix or update the system when required.

■ In some upgrade versions of legacy systems, certain features (that end-users want to retain) are dropped or missing.

This means there cannot be a ‘oneclick’ upgrade to the newer version.

Therefore if a company throws open the assessment and proactively researches the process control options available in the industry, the potential for migration to a new and perhaps more appropriate SCADA system may be considered.

The road less travelled Migration paths can generally take two forms: ■ Full replacement i.e. disregarding the existing system altogether and starting from scratch; or virtually ‘forklifting’ system architecture, components, directories etc.

■ Migration i.e. moving to another improved platform without the risk that comes with completely ‘re-engineering’ the system Full replacement or starting from scratch is doable; however it may involve more time spent in understanding the old system, creating a new architecture, validating/testing etc as well as considerably more risk than migration.

The chart below presents a simplified positioning of various improvements to legacy systems based on the cost/risk versus value matrix.

The cost/risk versus value matrix is useful not only in plotting the relative ROI of the various options, but also in comparing multiple vendors for the same option and making a choice of vendor on this basis.

For migration, a number of considerations influence the position of the vendors’ solutions in the matrix.

■ Migration using standard industrywww.pacetoday.com.au

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leading products promises less risk than full replacement starting from scratch.

■ Migration costs, manpower, time, errors and risks increase when the exercise involves manually converting each component of a display/graphic page from the legacy system to the new platform.

■ Migration that involves manual testing of each component in the project in all locations increases testing and rework time and cost.

■ Migration that does not provide the flexibility to adjust for enhancements in functionality and usability reduces the long term value to the company.

The chart below shows the three key phases of pre-migration, actual migration and post-migration.

Getting it right If a company decides to go down the migration path, the choice of conversion methodology and tools would depend on how well it can simplify the process, reduce the time and cost of conversion and still maintain reliability.

While some home-grown tools are used by system integrators to automate information entry tasks, the process control industry is still a long way off from the position of offering a range of full-functionality automated conversion tools to migrate multiple platforms from most major vendors.

www.pacetoday.com.au

Key questions across different phases

However, one such tool available today is Switch2Citect from Citect; an automated solution that can convert various legacy systems to CitectSCADA. Switch2Citect stores the legacy system configuration into an intermediate generic format which then allows users to define the ‘what’ and ‘how’ of conversion. Enhancements in both functionality and usability can be made along the way. As one engineer remarked, “(An automated conversion tool) allowed us to convert our customer's legacy system in far less

time and with reduced risk compared to manual conversion. The project came in under budget and ahead of time – great for us and our customer.”

While automated conversion does have very tangible benefits, difficulties in code/script conversion, the different security models used and the variations in the way different brands of products reproduce displays mean that automated conversion cannot be used for all parts of the migration process.

However, when used appropriately,

an automated tool delivers substantial savings in time, effort and cost of conversion. For example, a process mimic display (for simulation of a process) done manually could take anywhere between one and two days, whereas converting the legacy display using an automated tool would do much of the work in minutes, leaving plenty of time to put the finishing touches to the conversion with far less risk of introducing new errors. Additionally, if the automated tool allows the user to adjust the conversion rules, it is also possible to automatically add additional functionality, improve maintainability and introduce corporate standards. Automated conversion will also result in much reduced testing time.

In the end, migrating systems need not be a process fraught with error, uncertainty or the inability to enhance usability and functionality. If companies adequately research the available offerings from the HMI/SCADA industry, ask and answer the right questions, involve all levels of stakeholders in the process and look for tools to make the migration simpler and more efficient, the result will be a whole new level of process control performance with greater gains in flexibility, reliability and productivity.

Commentary provided by Citect/ Frost & Sullivan

PACE June 2008 29

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In focus: Motors and drives

ABC of drives Don't feel bad about being confused by “medium voltage drives” terminology. It’s confusing because it sounds like a technical term, but it really is marketing-driven. There are two terms that can be confusing to anyone new to the field of automated control of electric motors.

CHARLIE G. MASI

LET’S start with the word “drive.”

Also sometimes called an “invertor,” a drive is essentially a power amplifier that puts out the electric power needed by an electric motor based on the torque and/or speed called for by the controller, which is a digital computer tasked with overall system control. As the industry has shifted in favour of variable-speed drives, the role of the drive has become more important.

Variable-speed motor/drive combinations use a synchronous ac motor with an encoder built in. The encoder signals the motor’s speed and phase angle to the drive, which must then match its output frequency to the motor speed and its output phase to produce the required torque.

Drive circuitry is, in general, based on power-supply technology, with simple drives being based on linear

System being driven

Controller

Figure 1. The motor, drive and encoder often form a tight little feedback loop within the control system.

power supply circuits with voltage or current regulation. Modern drives are now based on switching power supply circuits, which are much more efficient.

Figure 2 shows one possible architecture for a single-phase motor drive, based on a switching power supply circuit with digital feedback control. It is not the only possible architecture,

nor is it necessarily a particularly good architecture for any given application.

The process starts with a balanced rectifier and filter to produce balanced single-phase dc power. A pulse-width modulator (PWM) forms an approximation to the ac sine wave from a set of pulses of varying width. Since a PWM produces a single-ended output, to maintain efficiency, two PWMs are required: one to form the positive half cycle, and the other to form the negative half. These halves combine in a transformer, whose output is then filtered to remove the high frequency artifacts.

The microprocessor decides how to form the pulses based on input from the encoder and controller. The controller indicates what the system needs and the drive’s microcontroller figures out how to produce it. If, for example, the controller calls for increased speed, the microprocessor knows that (Continued on page 32)

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PACE June 2008 31

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In focus: Motors and drives (Continued from page 31)

this will require increased torque, which it can only get by increasing the phase angle between the motor’s magnetic field, and its rotor field (assumed to be a permanent magnet rotor for simplicity). The drive advances the phase by reducing the number of clock cycles between the encoder position pulse and when the delay counter initiates the next waveform.

As the rotor speeds up, the field frequency must increase to keep pace.

The microprocessor accomplishes that by reducing the number of clock cycles between pulse leading edges.

The “instantaneous” voltage put out by the PWM depends on the width of each pulse. A third counter, the width counter, determines the pulse width by opening the PWM gate for a number of clock cycles depending on where in the waveform the drive is at that instant.

In short, the delay counter tells the repeat counter when to start the next cycle; the repeat counter tells the pulse former when to start the next pulse; and the width counter tells it when to end the pulse. The pulse former opens the PWM gate when triggered by the repeat counter, and closes it when triggered by the width counter.

To get the drive’s power efficiently out to the load as mechanical power requires having enough voltage to drive enough current through the motor. The output power is, after all, the product of voltage times current.

The ratio of the voltage to the current, on the other hand, defines an impedance for the drive/motor combination.

Copper resistance in the motor coils and power cables, as well as contact resistance in all the connections rob

Clock

Figure 2. One possible drive architecture is based on pulse width modulation.

the system of power, however. The higher the circuit impedance compared to these parasitic impedances, the more efficient the overall system will be.

Figure 3 compares motor/drive impedance to a typical parasitic impedance level of one Ohm. Assuming we want the ratio to be one or two orders of magnitude, the chart shows how the supply voltage needed correlates with output power. Small, fractional horsepower motors (red line) work well from a few tens to a few hundreds of Volts. Larger motors require hundreds of Volts to run efficiently. As horsepower require requirements climb, so do the drive voltage requirements.

That much is basic ac motor technology. What really drives people crazy is the term “medium voltage

Figure 3. Impedance vs. supply voltage. For optimum operation, drive voltage correlates with motor output power.

32 June 2008 PACE

drive.” It is a purely marketing term.

From zero to 600 V is called “low voltage.” “Medium voltage” is 600 V and above. There is no “high-voltage” designation.

Comparing this 600 V cutoff to the chart shows that low-voltage drives provide good efficiency up to several horsepower (10,000 W). Above 10,000 W, however, medium voltage drives are needed. Voltages above a few thousand Volts, however, are needed only for the relatively few electric motor applications requiring hundreds of horsepower. Most applications requiring that much mechanical output are currently served by internal combustion engines.

Medium voltage drives typically achieve power regulation by pulsewidth modulation to match drive power with mechanical load requirements at the desired speed.

Many observers naively assume that the gains available by specifying medium voltage drives arise from the same phenomena that reduce losses in highvoltage power-transmission lines.

That simply is not true. Power transmission lines have a fixed length – the distance between the generating station where the power originates to the load where it will be used. Electric motor windings, however, do not have fixed lengths.

In both cases, the power required depends on outside factors. In the motor case, however, the torque available from the motor is proportional to the product of current and the number of turns in the windings. To keep the same torque (and thus power) while

reducing current, the motor designer must increase the number of turns proportionately. Assuming a constant current per unit cross-sectional wire area, it is easy to show that motor efficiency is independent of the supply voltage. At the same time, the increased number of turns negates the reduced wire diameter, wiping out any space savings.

While medium-voltage installations can be engineered to achieve both higher efficiency and smaller physical size than low-voltage counterparts, the primary phenomenon motivation for using a medium voltage drive is load-impedance control.

The general formula relating electrical power to supply voltage and load impedance is P= V2/Z, where P is the delivered power, V is the supplied voltage, and Z is the complex load impedance. In the case of a motor drive, the impedance’s real part dissipates power directly as heat, while it’s the imaginary part that converts electrical power to mechanical power.

Both components, however, combine to limit the current that the load sinks, and thus the power that can be delivered.

Rearranging the equation to solve for Z provides an expression for load impedance as a function of supply voltage at a given power requirement: Z= V2/P. Graphing this equation on a log-log plot produces a family of parallel straight lines covering the relevant domain of 1 V to 100,000 V on the horizontal axis and the relevant impedance range of 0.01 O to 1,000 O. The voltage domain comprises all of the low and medium drive voltages that are significant in industrial control applications. The impedance range goes from that seen in a 1,340 hp motor powered by a 30 kV drive to below the contact resistance achievable by mechanical connections.

That lower limit is what drives engineers to look at medium-voltage drives. It is difficult or impossible – certainly impractical – to reduce those parasitic resistances below the level of 0.1 O and usually below 1 O. And, that’s not including the actual copper losses in the motor’s windings!

It’s no wonder that engineers planning to control motors developing in excess of 10,000 W of mechanical power increasingly opt for mediumvoltage drives supplying 600 V or more.

Control Engineering

www.pacetoday.com.au

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PACE ZENITH AWARDS 2008 FINALISTS Due to unforeseen circumstances, some entries for this year’s Zeniths were fashionably late, but that doesn’t mean they’re not equally strong contenders as those announced in our May edition! These are the final nominees that will try to take the trophy home – or back to the office – on June 18 in Sydney:

Category: CHEMICALS AND PETROCHEMICALS Henkel Control System Upgrade Melbourne, VIC Henkel Australia awarded Zi-Argus to design and deliver a modern batch control system for their new Hydrofluoric Acid facility and to upgrade the Acid Batching plant at the production site in Kilsyth. Starting in September 2007 the engineering teams of both companies worked closely together to develop a stateof-the-art Siemens PCS7 automation solution that has been used due to its innovative features, including integrated control and safety (with a safety matrix for process system interlocks) and PCS7 web client operator

stations. Zi-Argus managed to complete the sophisticated solution under tight timeframes and with minimal disruption to production. Legacy PLC I/O was left in place to operate in tandem with the new facility, with a Profibus comms card replacing the original processor at the end – with easy swap-over. Zi-Argus designed & managed the turn-key solution with full electrical design (including safety system and SIL 2 instrumentation), electrical installation, supply of sensors and the PCS7 software development and testing.

Sponsored by:

IFS Category: FOOD AND BEVERAGE IFS Applications for the Globus Group Sydney, NSW The Globus Group, a pioneer in food processing and packaging, was running on a 15 year-old, internallywritten AS400 system that was rapidly reaching its sell by date and required three full-time IT staff to run.

Using IFS Applications, Globus has gone from a bespoke, manual legacy system to a sensitive automated planning tool. Darko Supurovic, Group Technical Manager at Globus noted that “IFS Applications is not only easier to use than our previous system, but gives us a clear overview of our entire

THE BEST OF THE REST

ZI-ARGUS

operation. We now have simple and easy access to data from a variety of sources – an absolute criterion for accurate forecasts.” Globus enjoys easy access to business critical information and reports. All business areas are fully integrated providing enhanced inventory control as well as service delivery capacity, resulting in significant time, resource and cost savings.

Sponsored by:

WORSLEY ALUMINA AND I&E SYSTEMS Category: MINING Advance Process Management (APM) Collie, WA The Worsley Alumina Refinery is one of the largest in the world, with an annual production of 3.5 million tonnes. The project is an initiative aimed at coordinating all of the refinery’s process and control related activities using a coherent strategy consistent with present and future requirements. Worsley Alumina and IES have worked in an integrated project team environment from the initial master planning phase through to APM project handover, with IES providing the project management, engineering services and leading the construction/commissioning management. Five control rooms with over 50 operators have been migrated to a

new Central Control Room with an upgraded control system. Nearly 4000 process signals and over 300 drives have been migrated from the obsolete plant equipment to new systems with no impact to planned operations.

Current best practices in the area of human factor engineering have been adopted to ensure operator performance can be optimised in relation to Abnormal, Normal and Production efficiency situations. The project implemented a new style of operator graphical displays; the design is recognised as leading edge technology and has attracted a lot of interest from other companies. The project is in the final stages and on target to be completed under budget.

Sponsored by:

ANSTO Category: TRANSPORT, POWER AND INFRASTRUCTURE Bragg Institute Electrical Engineers’ Neutron Beam Instrumentation Safety Interlock System Sydney, NSW The neutron beam instruments are employed 24/7 by international scientists; beam time is valued at $10,000 per day and each instrument is worth between $3M and $9M. Down time due to false trips is unacceptable. The regulatory environment associated with neutron beams is very heavy; each safety incident must be reported -every single trip of the system whether it be for an E-stop depressed or a false signal from a failed limit switch. To minimise such disturbances and disruptions, a thorough study of the available safety systems was undertaken, and the Pilz programmable safety system was mature

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enough for this highly regulated environment. The project integrated over 2000 safety I/O and provided safe access, emergency exit, emergency stop, and control for eight neutron beam instruments. With every single I/O tested and signed off by three people. The level of detailed design and documentation submitted for external review was of a magnitude more complex than any industrial safety system, even when considering the oil and mining industries. Approximately 12 man years have gone into the detailed design, deployment, testing, and commissioning of this safety interlock system. The design was completed 100% within the Bragg Institute and ANSTO, and no outsourcing of the design was used.

Sponsored by:

PACE June 2008 33

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PACE ZENITH AWARDS 2008 FINALISTS THE BEST OF THE REST

WATER CORPORATION AND DAGREMONT Category: WATER AND WASTEWATER Perth Seawater Desalination Plant Perth, WA Careful examination of the environmental, social and financial impact of implementing desalination in Western Australia led the state’s public services water company Water Corporation to the decision to build a 45 gigalitre per annum plant, capable of providing up to 17 percent of Perth’s water requirements. The project was awarded as a joint venture, with French firm Degremont and Multiplex Engineering as partners.

With an extensive track record in desalination, SIMATIC PCS 7 from Siemens and the world’s number one fieldbus, Profibus, were selected.

The plant has over 300 Profibus PA instruments, multiple Sinamics G150 drives, and an array of intelligent SimoCode motor starters. Having signed a 25 year operational and maintenance license to run the plant, it was also imperative that the process automation system selected was not only reliable, but that its lifecycle considerations were taken into account.

With PCS 7, key components are designed to be backwardly compatible. Four sets of redundant high availability PCS 7 controllers were used along with redundant Ethernet and Profibus networks. By building in a high degree of fault tolerance, assurance that minor faults do not lead to unplanned downtime is provided, along with an additional level of diagnostic information which complements that available in the Profibus devices, thus offering comprehensive data availability.

Having achieved first water on time and with the official plant opening completed in April 2007, the business of day to day plant operations started in earnest. With the assurance of a high availability process control system and a wide range of diagnostic data, operations and maintenance personnel decided to extend their coverage further through the addition of the PCS 7 Web Server. The PCS 7 Web Server provides maintenance personnel with the tools to access plant data from off site, yet in a secure environment. Such access aids plant maintenance, especially outside normal working hours and can also be used to provide access to plant parameters for optimisation or reporting purposes.

The building of this strategically important new plant allows Water Corporation to significantly reduce the pressure on existing supplies and effectively eliminates the possibility of strengthened sprinkler rosters or a total sprinkler ban, as has been in place in other major Australian cities during recent summers. Less than twelve months after its formal opening, Plant Director Greig Mercer points out that the plant is ‘exceeding output expectations’, which is testament to the advanced level of technology employed across the plant.

Sponsored by:

Finding what you need has never been easier

NEW CATALOGUE NEW WEBSITE EASIER TO FIND | EASIER TO COMPARE | EASIER TO CHOOSE

Easy access to over 200,000 electronic, electro-mechanical and process control & automation products

Visit RS Online or call to request a copy of the RS Catalogue www.rsaustralia.com 1300 656 636

34 June 2008 PACE

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In focus: Test and measurement

Crafting a hybrid test system Hybrid systems let engineers choose the best approach for each application, but unless such systems are crafted carefully, they may not achieve the performance the developer expects.

RICHARD A. QUINNELL

for a system element. High power or extreme precision may need a GPIB or LXI instrument, for instance, while high-speed digitisation may need PXI.” Instrument makers acknowledge that no one instrument architecture is superior at everything.

JUST as the “one size fits all” approach never really worked in clothing, no single test instrumentation approach fits all applications. To create systems that employ the best available instrument for each test procedure, some engineers are building Bottlenecks and hybrid systems that combine instru- synchronisation While hybrid systems may be the ments from platforms such as PXI, answer for many applications, they LXI, GPIB, and VXI. There are numerous reasons behind can be difficult to optimise. Instruthe hybrid trend. One is purely eco- ment vendors report that one of the nomic: Hybrid systems often allow main stumbling blocks to successful you to use instruments you have on hybrid system development is the crehand, reducing your need to buy ation of artificial performance bottleequipment in a specific architecture. necks. NI’s McDonell said, “People As Richard McDonell, senior group get into trouble when they fail to manager at National Instruments, think about the performance inherent noted, “People have a lot of existing in the various buses. They can end up equipment. Coming out of the tech trying to do things like sending highbust in the ’90s, they bought equip- speed data from a PXI digitiser over GPIB to an arbitrary waveform generment at a discount, then it got put in storage due to staff cutbacks.” Chris ator.”

Chris Armstrong, Van Woerkom, Agilent Keithley’s associate marTechnologies’ senior marHybrid systems’ keter for data-acquisition keting engineer, added, products, added, “It’s “Developers don't get to design flexibility almost always possible to throw away their old allows you to use get a hybrid system runequipment; they have to ning, but the trick is in mix it with the new.” instruments you optimising it. The synThe design flexibility chronisation you need to that a hybrid architecture have on hand tweak the system may not allows is also an increasing draw for developers. “Test sys- be there unless you think ahead and tems must adjust to new needs quick- plan it out. It’s not a hacker’s world.”

The issue of synchronisation is a ly,” said McDonell, “so to get more close second to performance as a flexibility, developers are looking to hybrid systems.” He explained that stumbling block. Three methods for the hybrid approach lets developers synchronising test events are availstrike a balance between the opti- able: direct-signal, backplane-based, and time-based synchronisation. mised functionality of dedicated Direct-signal synchronisation ininstruments and the ability of virtual instruments to quickly address new volves cabling directly from one test requirements. McDonell noted instrument to another to provide trigthat “the trend toward hybrid systems ger and clocking signals and is availhas evolved from being budget-driven able on most instruments. Backplanebased synchronisation uses a shared to being driven by the need to keep set of lines in the backplane for such up.”

Hybrid systems also free developers signals, as in PXI and VXI systems.

Time-based synchronisation depends from the constraints of a specific on each instrument having access to a architecture, especially when the needed functionality is not available time-of-day clock so users can initiate in that architecture or does not meet events based on a schedule; clock the performance requirements. Keith- sources for test instruments include the IEEE 1588 network-based synley Instruments’ multi-applications products marketing director Chuck chronisation for instruments with Cimino said, “Optimisation of a test Ethernet connections and clocks system may dictate the specific format (Continued on page 36) www.pacetoday.com.au

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In focus: Test and measurement (Continued from page 35)

derived from the Global Positioning System (GPS).

Because not all architectures support all three types of synchronisation, developers must consider synchronisation as carefully as bus bandwidth when linking instruments in a hybrid design. Otherwise, they can end up with convoluted system cabling or will have to coordinate timed events with triggered ones by inserting delays. Both results lead to added complexity and reduced performance.

An additional hybrid challenge involves the system software. “Almost all test instruments need a driver or the like for remote operation,” said Agilent’s Van Woerkom, “so you have to worry about versions and compatibility with operating systems, especially when you are mixing older and newer devices. It’s not a slam dunk that they will all work together.”

Standards aid development Fortunately, developers of hybrid systems can take advantage of existing standards to simplify development and maintenance. On the software front, Woerkom pointed to the Interchangeable Virtual Instrument (IVI) drivers as one technology that makes test instruments more “plug and play.” NI’s McDonell cited the Virtual Instrumentation System Architecture (VISA) specification as also helping to simplify software development.

Both IVI and VISA make it possible for programmers to write drivers that refer to a generic instrument (such as an oscilloscope) rather than to a specific model. Such abstraction not only simplifies test software development but also eases system upgrades by permitting the software to remain virtually unchanged when an instrument is replaced with a different model.

Vendors also provide resources that

36 June 2008 PACE

Hybrid systems combine various architectures, allowing developers to blend legacy and optimised equipment.

can help you build a hybrid system.

NI, for example, maintains a library of drivers for more than 5000 instruments. Agilent offers an I/O Libraries Suite, which includes the Agilent Connection Expert tool that identifies all the ports in a system and loads the appropriate drivers. Agilent’s I/O Monitor tool also helps identify when communications errors occur in a multivendor system. Keithley has developed the Test Script Processor language to help developers synchronise and automate test system behaviour.

For ease of assembly, vendors have developed bridges and adapters that make it simpler to connect instrument architectures. Robert Rennard, president of the LXI Consortium, noted that there are now a variety of LXI adapters available for making GPIB, PXI, and USB connections in a way that makes the secondary architecture appear to behave like an LXI node. In addition, GPIB and Ethernet interface cards are available for PCs and PXI

systems as well as for VXI, M-module, and other bus bridges.

Though the assembly and programming of hybrid systems has gotten easier, developers must still plan out their system design. Vendors recommend that developers begin by learning the basic performance characteristics and tradeoffs of each architecture they intend to use so they will be less likely to create artificial bottlenecks in the data flow. To that end, manufacturers have published application notes, white papers, and Web pages that give overviews of the various architectures (see “Resources” list at the end of this file).

The next step is to decide on the overall system architecture, including data flow and synchronisation patterns. Keithley’s Cimino recommended that developers start by defining the measurement requirements and then identifying the instruments, regardless of interface, that can meet those requirements. With that list of candidates in hand, Cimino says,

developers can more accurately identify a system architecture that will meet their needs.

McDonell of NI – the company that initially developed the PXI specification – suggested that developers consider using PXI as the system architecture’s foundation, adding other instrument buses as needed in a layered approach. He pointed out that PXI offers all three synchronisation types, making it a logical centre for coordinating test activity. The LXI Consortium’s Rennard commented that in large systems a single controller may get overloaded, and so he recommended that such systems adopt a LAN backbone and segment their operation into multiple control zones, taking advantage of peer-topeer communications to exchange information.

Whichever backbone structure is adopted, however, developers should try to keep things as simple as possible. “It’s probably not a good idea to mix all the test architectures together in a single system,” said Agilent’s Van Woerkom. “The more different types you add, the more unstable it becomes and the harder to manage.”

Despite the challenges, hybrid systems are rapidly becoming the best approach for many test requirements.

They help leverage existing equipment and extend the lifetime of systems by supporting replacement of instruments without the need for reprogramming. Hybrid designs also open opportunities for embracing new capabilities as they become available.

“Companies are working to make sure that the different instrument architectures will work together as seamlessly as possible,” said Van Woerkom. “You don’t have to get rid of your old equipment, or be afraid to try the new stuff.”

Test & Measurement World

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In focus: HMI

HMI size does matter HMIs have mutated and changed with new requirements, and they have become more flexible and capable. And while they’ve been doing that, they’ve become smaller and more useful.

AS embedded computers have become ubiquitous, so too the need for human machine interfaces has grown. Once found in only complex control systems, like distributed control systems in refineries and other process plants, HMI systems are now found in many guises and many locations, from games to industrial machines and tooling systems.

Strictly speaking, any way for a human being to “interface” with a machine is an HMI. Transmitters and sensors originally had no HMI, and many didn’t even have as simple an HMI as a display. Many were blind, with just an output signal. Some had a rudimentary HMI: a single or dual line ASCII display with a set of arrows for programming, or a 10 key pad.

Very few field instruments, sensors and analysers ever had HMI panels that could actually provide good graphics, have a simple, easy to understand way to enter data and commands, and provide a high resolution window into the process.

HMIs that used full computers and

full display screens were limited to control rooms because of the fragility of early computer circuitry, screens and disk drives. Enclosures were developed that would allow a computer-based HMI to be located out on the plant floor, but these were very large, bulky and prone to failure from heat, moisture, wash-down, and other plant floor perils.

process at his fingertips, and the requirements for local display and control have become more complex.

One of the first advances in this area was the early touchscreen display.

This enabled the operator to simply press the portion of the display that had a “virtual button” on it, to force an action or recipe to occur. This eliminated the need for keyboards, mice

made it possible to replace the 2-line display on a typical tool or transmitter with a full featured HMI. Operators work in very limited space on the plant floor. Sometimes there is simply no place for the operator, tools, parts, and a large-form HMI. Sometimes operators need a completely portable HMI.

The small form factor HMI A small form factor HMI provides increased capability for operator interface for recipe management, alarm management and operational control, and can be installed on devices and tools Early computer-based HMIs also ran hot and were significant power consumers. A typical “desktop” computer in the 1980s required as much as 200 W.

Helping operators work As plant floor processes become more automated, the operator needs to have more information on the

and joysticks, except for unusual or complex programming tasks that could be done during shutdowns.

Another major advance was the LCD display. It took up much less space, and was far less fragile than a CRT display, and could therefore be used in much smaller spaces.

The biggest advance was in small form factor embedded computers that

Small form factor HMIs coupled with small form factor embedded computers have revolutionised the use of HMIs on the plant floor. But what features should a modern HMI have?

They can be used in space-limited areas. More and more PCs and embedded PCs are being used in manufacturing applications for networking and shop or plant floor controls.

Many of these devices are of limited utility unless accompanied by some sort of HMI. A small form factor HMI provides increased capability for operator interface for recipe manage(Continued on page 38)

New Novatech Oxygen Analyser The Novatech 1732 Oxygen Analyser is the sixth generation of Oxygen Transmitters designed and manufactured by Novatech Controls.

The Novatech 1231 and 1232 Oxygen probes have the world’s strongest, most durable Zirconia sensor; They are leak-proof: preventing incorrect flue gas measurements.

The Novatech 1732 accepts two Oxygen sensors and can avoid interrupting the combustion process in the event of a sensor failure.

The Novatech 1732 has a main burner interlock eliminating potentially explosive situations.

The Novatech 1732 can calculate Combustion Efficiency oxygen deficiency, and % combustibles.

The Novatech 1732 logs up to 4,000 alarm events with date and time of occurrence, acceptance and clearance.

Novatech Controls Pty Ltd 309 Reserve Road, Cheltenham, Victoria 3192, Australia Telephone: +61 3 9585 2833 Facsimile: +61 3 9585 2844 Email: info@novatech.com.au Web: www.novatech.com.au www.pacetoday.com.au

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In focus: HMI (Continued from page 37)

ment, alarm management and operational control. Small form factor HMIs can be installed on a wide variety of devices and tools, in addition to the traditional control desk or panel mounting. In fact, HMIs can now be so small that they can be installed in the same space that would have previously consumed by a single push button and a single indicator light. So in less space than a typical Hand-OffAuto station would have required in the panel, the operator can have a fully featured small form factor HMI, with an infinite number of push buttons and indicators.

In addition, the modern small form factor HMI has common programming languages and operating systems.

Thin Client or Embedded PC. The modern equivalent of a dumb terminal, thin clients are used in many distributed networking applications where either the program and operating system are loaded from a network server, or a “light OS” such as Windows CE or Windows XP-Embedded is provided in flash memory for a specific purpose computing system.

Thin clients can often be used instead of full PCs for embedded computing applications. Thin clients are often combined with an HMI, and when the HMI has a small form factor, the entire product, HMI and thin client processor, may be physically

38 June 2008 PACE

only as large as the HMI display itself.

This of course makes it possible to use an integrated thin client/small form factor HMI in locations where a traditional HMI and associated PC would not fit or be functional.

Lower power consumption.

Increased power usage worldwide has given rise to the need for computing devices with much lower power requirements. Typical traditional HMI products, including CRT displays and even LCD displays, along with PCs with cooling fans, hard

drives and other moving parts are known to be power intensive.

A small form factor HMI built to be used with a fanless embedded PC or thin client requires significantly less power than a traditional HMI/PC combination. For example, the power consumption of Advantech’s newly released 3.5” QVGA TFT LCD Xscale PXA270 Touch Panel Computer is only 8W. The use of lower power consumption HMIs and embedded PCs and thin clients permits the use of more devices for the same power load, or, conversely, overall lower power consumption and thus lower cost of ownership than previous generations of HMIs and computers provided.

Plus, lower power consumption small form factor HMIs and embedded computers are a contribution to the “greening” of manufacturing technology wherever they are used.

Portability when required. One of the greatest benefits of the lower power consumption necessary to run small form factor HMIs is the ability to operate on small batteries. This, plus the very size of the small form factor HMI has made it possible to produce industrial grade portable HMI devices that are far superior to

commercial grade laptops and touchpads. In some cases, these portable devices can be entirely wireless, providing an HMI, computing capability, and data acquisition capacity that is able to roam wherever the operator wishes or needs to go in the plant.

Increased reliability. Lower power devices like small form factor HMIs are also designed with very high levels of component integration and VLSI circuit boards. Fewer components and lower power requirements improve the overall reliability of the computer.

Mean times between failures (MTBF) are lengthened when this combination of lower component counts running at lower power levels is extended to small form factor HMIs. Reduced cost. High level integration and small form factor makes the modern HMI less costly, both to manufacture and to purchase. Higher reliability makes the total cost of ownership (TCOS) lower than older designs, as well.

Better cost-benefit ratio. A modern small form factor HMI can be purchased for about the same cost as a dozen push buttons and indicator lights, providing better control, easier operator interaction, easier maintenance and support, and much greater operational utility for the same cost.

Fits a broad range of vertical markets. Small Form Factor HMIs can be found in a wide variety of applications in a large number of vertical markets, not only in industrial automation.

They can be found in commercial applications; HVAC applications such as zone controllers and data acquisition systems; machine control applications; environmental monitoring applications; telecom applications; automotive applications; and many more.

Because the small form factor HMI is a fully functional PC, not just a PLC operator terminal, this inherent flexibility and universality greatly increases the small form factory HMI’s applicability in multiple vertical markets.

Commentary provided by Advantech Corporation, Industrial Automation Group.

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New Products Thermal imager

Wireless network

THE PTI-160 series offer an optimal price/performance ratio. Equipped with an integrated highperformance UFPA detector, these cameras are quickly ready for use and deliver sharp, accurate thermal images for on-site problem analysis. They feature automatic hotspot detection, up to four moving measurement points, a discernable acoustic alarm signal, an integrated laser pointer and close focusing distance from 0.1m to infinity.

Ideal for professionals needing to conduct energy audits, electrical and mechanical inspections, HVAC and PCB inspections, tank level determinations, along with facility maintenance and manufacturing process measurement applications.

OneTemp, 1300 768 887, melbsales@onetemp. com.au

SURECROSS wireless network is the first wireless platform built from the ground up for industry – featuring proprietary Radio Frequency (RF) design, advanced power management features and robust communications integrity. SureCross is designed and built by Banner Engineering Corp., and it is optimised for a wide range of challenging sensing and control applications with reliability, security and deterministic response capabilities. The most basic SureCross network consists of a gateway system controller and one or more remotely located nodes that bring monitoring and control capabilities to connected I/O. Each gateway can simultaneously support up to 15 Nodes and each

node can accommodate up to 12 I/O points.

Micromax, 1800 634 766; wollongong@micromax.com.au

Small footprint panel meter RED Lion’s CUB5 series analogue panel meters increase user versatility in a footprint that is 30% smaller than conventional 48x96mm meters, at nearly half the cost. With dimensions of 39x77mm and offering 11.7mm digits with user selectable bright red or green LED backlighting, which can be programmed to display colour change at preset, the CUB5 can meet a variety of industrial application including measuring DC current and voltage, processing signals from flow meters, pressure sensors and positioning sensors and accepting inputs from RTD and Thermocouple sensors. The CUB5 can be easily programmed with the front panel

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High-speed line sensor

buttons or with Red Lion’s free Crimson 2.0 software.

Control Logic, (07) 3252 9611, sales@control-logic.com.au

DESIGNED by LMI Technologies (LMI), EyeCon 2000 provides system integrators with the latest technology to measure a wide surface area using a single Gigabit Ethernet connection. Designed not only for high frequency and accuracy measurement of mat surfaces and shiny black materials, such as rubber, but also for measuring thickness and width and profiling component preparation stock material. This sensor provides a profile rate of 4,000 samples per second, without any sacrifice to quality and control. The

standard features provide binocular vision inspection to observe the target from two different directions.

LMI Technologies, info.rubber@ lmitechnologies.com.

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New Products Pneumatic switches THE HNL Series 100 is a pneumatic output pressure switch with non-bleed two-port output switching, designed for monitoring systems associated with natural gas transmission. The switch can be used to protect a system or pipeline from an abnormally high or low pressure, which might result in the discharge of gas, or in other applications requiring the

switching of any dry inert gas that is compatible with the materials of construction. It provides high switching accuracy with low switching differentials (the change in process pressure required to change the output). Ten standard ranges provide setpoint adjustment pressures from 0.1 bar up to 80 bar.

AMS Instrumentation & Calibration, (03) 9017 8225, sales@ams-ic.com.au

Parallel toolbox THE MathWorks has integrated its Parallel Computing Toolbox with its MATLAB optimisation toolboxes to help further simplify the development of parallel applications. Parallel computing capabilities are now integrated inside the optimisation solvers of MathWorks Optimisation Toolbox and Genetic Algorithm and Direct Search Toolbox, enabling users to solve computationally-intensive optimisation problems on multicore computers and computer clusters without significantly changing

their existing programs. The integration of select optimisation solvers with Parallel Computing Toolbox allows for the use of available computational resources to solve more computationallyintensive problems than previously possible on a single core. Example applications include calibrating an automotive engine control unit with experimental data, identifying an aircraft design that minimises noise while maximising fuel efficiency and selecting a portfolio of stocks that maximise gains while minimising risk.

Cost effective HMI THE NT3S is Omron’s latest HMI, a simple and cost-effective alternative. Measuring just 132 x 69 mm, it’s only 34mm deep, meaning it can be slipped into the slimmest of panels. However, it still provides 192 x 64 pixels of graphic information on a monochrome LCD. The

entire display area is also an analogue resistive touch panel, making the unit interactive and more intuitive. The NT3S still offers the full range of graphic features, including bar graphs, analogue meters, picture library, bitmaps (including image converter) and alarms.

OMRON Electronics, (02) 9878 6377

High Voltage Ethernet – Hirschmann MACH1000 You have run fibre optic cables to protect against RFI/EMI, but what about the switch? The MACH1000 extends that defence all the way, completely protecting your network. Designed for especially harsh environments such as around VFDs and high voltage generation & distribution, the MACH1000 features:

Vibrating limit switch LFV200 is a compact limit level sensor with a vibrating fork, suitable for detecting liquids in storage tanks and pipes. In addition to a version for factory automation, the LFV200 is also available in a hygiene-oriented design for use in the food, beverage and pharmaceutical industries. It can detect filling levels regardless of medium prop-

erties such as density, viscosity or dielectric constant. The sensor’s highly compact piezoelectric-driven vibration element vibrates at its mechanical resonance frequency. Neither heavy vibrations from other sources nor changes in the filling medium impair the reliable function of the LFV200.

SICK Australia, 1800 334 802, www.sick.com

• IEC 61850-3 & IEEE 1613 Substation Approvals.

• Gigabit backbone and HiPER-Ring redundancy.

• Powerful network security and performance.

Streamlining data

Teamed with DIN rail mount ‘OpenRail’ or modular ‘MICE’, the MACH1000 creates a formidable combination for mission-critical industrial and infrastructure networks.

If your network is highly important, you should be saying “Hi” to Hirschmann.

Inventory monitoring

Hirschmann. Simply a good Connection.

Represented nationally, call 1300 HIRSCHMANN for your local distributor or email hirschmann@daanet.com.au www.daanet.com.au

40 June 2008 PACE

VEGA optimised its measurement data visualisation software Visual VEGA and made it web capable.

WEB-VV is a user-friendly inventory visualisation system that is just as suitable for company networks as it is for worldwide measurement data logging. The data collected by WEB-VV is made available as charts, bar graphs and history diagrams. Inventory limits are actively monitored and transmitted in time or event controlled reports via e-mail or SMS. The spectrum of applications for WEB-VV is very broad.

The first pilot applications with the VMI solution are already successfully running in flour mills and tank farms. This business model can be easily applied to he food and petrochemical industries, at building materials suppliers, as well as in the environment and recycling industries.

VEGA Australia, (02) 9542 6662, www.vega. com.au

ROCKWELL Automation, has launched FactoryTalk Historian Site Edition (SE) – a new software package that allows manufacturers to quickly and automatically identify, gather and analyse detailed process data from any plant-floor control system or networked device. This software allows operators, supervisors and managers to call on extensive historical plantfloor data to gain insight into process, discrete and hybrid production operations. The ‘Auto Discover’ function eliminates time-consuming set-up and configuration associated with other historian programs. Operators can view machine data using the FactoryTalk Historian analysis tools, or call it up on FactoryTalk View SE clients using the built-in ‘Native Trending’ feature.

Rockwell Automation, (03) 9896 0300, rvaughan@ra.rockwell. com

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New Products Flowmeters and vortex meters KROHNE has released an enhancement to its OPTIFLUX range of magnetic flowmeters: the flanged ceramic lined model 5000-FL. It covers sizes 15-100mm to supplement the existing flanged models in sizes 150-250mm. The range features a high tech liner of partially stabilised zirconium oxide rather than the more conventional aluminium oxide.

Zirconium oxide has enhanced temperature shock characteristics and bending force stability compared to aluminium oxide. Zirconium oxide is nearly as hard as diamond and in conjunction with its cermet electrodes, makes it well suited to very abrasive applications. The 5000-FL has a base accuracy of 0.15% of rate with repeatability better than 0.06%.

They also have a new range of vortex meters, OPTISWIRL, covering sizes 15 to 300mm, with an integrated PT1000 temperature sensor built into its sensing pickup. The sensing pickup has two piezo elements which are fed into a differential amplifier. This combined with a newly developed intelligent signal processor; the OPTISWIRL provides accurate measurement even with disturbing signals and

process noise greater than 70%.It has a very robust design with a totally welded in shedder bar and can therefore withstand pressure shocks. OPTISWIRL 4070 C is the only vortex flowmeter with integrated pressure and temperature compensation in 2- wire technology; it provides accurate measurement of operating, standard volumetric and mass flow of conductive and non-conductive liquids, gases and vapours even with fluctuating pressures and temperatures.

KROHNE Australia,(02) 88446 1700, www.krohne.com.au

Calibration hand pump

Process under TeleControl SIMATIC PCS 7 has been expanded with telecontrol functions, connecting distant substations to the central control system.

In terms of operating philosophy and alarm signalling, for the plant operator there is no difference between local/distant stations. Dedicated lines, dial-up connections or radio systems are available for communication . The application range extends from the oil and gas industry through to the water supply and treatment sector. Simatic PCS 7 TeleControl integrates distributed, distant substations and a central control system to form a homogeneous overall solution.

Siemens, 131 773.

THE Series CHP Calibration Hand Pump is a rugged pump for applications up to 100 psi or 28.8 Hg Vacuum. The Durable Acetel plastic and anodized aluminium construction prevents body heat transfer, resulting in drift-free accurate readings. The Series CHP is equipped with oversized check valves in order to provide smooth and controlled operation. Dual o-rings on all pistons ensure the pump is leak-free. The series CHP is ideal for checking calibration of pressure or vacuum gauges, switches, or transmitters.

Dwyer Instruments, (02) 4272 2055, info@dwyerinst.com.au

Proximity sensors EATON’S iProx Clone is a versatile inductive proximity sensor, featuring advanced programmable characteristics such as adjustable output delay, speed detection and the ability to “clone” sensor configurations from over 4,800 competitive models. You can create your own sensor by customising output type, output mode, sensing range, response time and noise immunity. With the iProx Programming Software, you can save your sensor configuration to a database and clone the configuration to other iProx sensors. The iProx sensors utilise an embedded microprocessor with SmartSense technology, enabling them to perform unique sensing functions at extended sensing ranges.

Eaton, (02) 9693 4333, www.eatonelectric.com.au

Securing embedded web devices THE Secure Embedded Web Application Kit combines new security sample programs and software tools. Customers can use it to implement web and data security easily into their embedded application, and it offers a guide for design engineers who are new to the challenges of embedded security, getting them up-to-speed quickly and developing code for secure web pages and data exchanges. The kit contains: a RCM4300 RabbitCore with a 512MB mini SDTM card, a prototyping board, accessories, and development tools to get up and running quickly.

Included for a limited time is the book Practical Embedded Security, by Tim Stapko.

Dominion Electronics, (02) 9906 6988, sales@dominion.net.au www.pacetoday.com.au

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Events

Question of the Month answer:

WHAT’SON JUNE 5-6 Minerals Processing course, Perth www.mets.net.au, (08) 9421 9000 11-12 (Adelaide), 24, 26 (Melbourne) Rockwell Automation’s Automation University rvaughan@ra.rockwell.com 13 Flow measurement workshop, Sydney info@au.endress.com 16-17 The 7th Annual SCADA Conference, Brisbane michael.casey@informa.com.au, (02) 9080 4351 16-19 Master series: Instrumentation and Control, Brisbane www.idc-online.com 18 PACE Zenith Awards, Sydney ashley.buncher@reedbusiness.com.au 17 Hands-on introduction to graphical programming with NI LabVIEW, free workshop, Melbourne niaustralia.register@ni.com

7-15 Energy efficiency, Sydney estherw@marcusevanskl.com 7-10 Wonderware Historian and Active Factory Fundamentals, Sydney kevin.adair@wonderware.com.au 17-18 (Perth), 21-22 (Melbourne), 24-25 (Brisbane) Practical specification and technical writing for engineers and technical professionals idc@idc-online.com 21-24 Foodpro 2008, Sydney www.foodproexh.com 24-25 (Melbourne), 28-29 (Brisbane) Practical hazardous areas for engineers and technicians idc@idc-online.com 25 Pressure and temperature workshop, Sydney info@au.endress.com 30-31 Carbon footprints in your supply chain, Sydney estherw@marcusevanskl.com

JULY 1 (Traralgon), 3 (Wangaratta), 16-17 (Auckland), 25 (Christchurch) Rockwell Automation’s Automation University rvaughan@ra.rockwell.com 4 Turbidity, dissolved oxygen and pH workshop, Sydney info@au.endress.com

AUGUST 11-15 (Melbourne), 18-22 (Brisbane) PAS Alarm/ProSys Engineering Process control workshops www.prosysengineering.com 15 Radiometric level and density measurement by gamma workshop, Sydney info@au.endress.com

42 June 2008 PACE

A

THE reader who sent in this question said he normally sizes motors to run at between 75% and 100% of rated speed, but asks about overdriving by 150% by setting the variable frequency drive (VFD) at 90 Hz, rather than 60 Hz. Most AC motors can take it for short bursts provided the load is light, but not for continuous duty. The drive can certainly take it as long as current and voltage stay within specifications. The motor can take it as long as it doesn’t get too hot.

John Mazurkiewicz at Baldor Electric Company says there is no issue for the Variable Frequency Drive (VFD) in an over-speeding application. “The VFD can supply the required frequency above 60 Hz continuously; however, the mechanical characteristics of the motor are the determining factor. In terms of a conventional standard efficient three phase AC induction motor, the motor insulation and type of bearings should be reviewed prior to overspeeding the motor.

The heat inside the motor will increase in an over-speed condition and the motor must have an insulation rating that can withstand the increase in heat.

A Class F or Class H motor insulation is preferred when over-speeding an induction motor.

In an over-speed condition, the bearing grease is subjected to higher temperatures and therefore becomes thinner. Bearings can lock-up due to excessive heat buildup in the bearing journal. Additionally, once the grease becomes thin it can leak from the bearing journal into the stator assembly of the motor. Bearings that are not properly lubricated become hot and will eventually fail.”

Review the motor specifications carefully before attempting it in continuous duty. A call to the manufacturer’s tech support line probably would be in order as well. Overspeeding on a continuous basis would probably void any motor warranty and likely would shorten the motor’s service life.

A better choice would be to look into getting a motor rated for the higher speed, or adding a gear drive to provide the higher shaft speed. It seems like a waste of money, but buying a single motor that lasts through its normal service life is a lot less expensive in the long run than replacing the lower-rated motor every, say, two years.

www.pacetoday.com.au

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