A 16–Billion–Dollar–Market: Emerson Introduces “Pervasive Sensors”

Related Vendors

TURCK GmbH

EagleBurgmann Germany GmbH & Co. KG

Anton Paar GmbH

Emerson GmbH GmbH & Co. OHG

Emerson Process Management AG

Alongside these were also some Rosemount in-house products, such as wireless transmitters for mechanical pressure and temperature gauges – aimed at eliminating the need for personnel to do the walk-round plant monitoring in hazardous areas, the wireless safety shower alarm systems, and the Rosemount 708 wireless acoustic leak detector and temperature transmitter used to monitor steam trap operation and pressure relief valves (originally based on technology from Armstrong International). At the moment not all of these are wireless sensors, but such developments can be expected.

A Spin-Off from Wireless

This whole business area has been developed as a result of having wireless networking technology available across operational plants, which Peter Zornio suggested avoids 80-90% of the cost of a conventional sensor installation.

Zornio quoted current discussions with one Eastern European refinery, to illustrate the potential for the Pervasive Sensor business. Here, with a 20,000 I/O process control system, the refinery is looking at just three new applications of Pervasive sensing – steam trap monitoring, corrosion sensors and pressure safety valve monitoring – and thereby considering adding 12,000 I/O to achieve their requirement: 60% of the DCS sensor volume!

Pervasive Sensor Examples

Tom Moser presented several customer applications of Pervasive Sensors to the Emerson Exchange conference. Typical was a story from the Flint Hills Resources refinery in Minnesota, where Nick Jude, their rotating equipment reliability engineer, conducted a process hazard analysis and found 110 pumps that were at risk of vapour cloud releases and potential fires.

“We only had enough funds to upgrade 15 pumps with traditional technology, but with wireless we had enough money to do all 110 pumps” said Jude. Pine Bend fitted 110 pumps with Emerson CSI9420 wireless vibration transmitters to provide continuous fault detection.

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