Augment the Safety Aspect: How Process Control Becomes a Plant Safety Cornerstone

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TURCK GmbH

EDL Anlagenbau Gesellschaft mbH

ProMinent GmbH

Siemens AG Industry Sector

Protecting Mechanical Assets

In addition to electrical components and control loops, mechanical assets such as pumps, valves, heat exchangers and compressors play a major role in plant performance. Monitoring their condition has a high economic impact, due to extended maintenance cycles or reduced energy consumption.

But in contrast to intelligent field devices – as state-of-the-art instrumentation or analytical devices – mechanical assets do not have their own electronic and communication interfaces. They do not appear as active objects in the control system and there is a lack of diagnostic capabilities. In Simatic PCS 7, the Condition Monitoring Library offers preconfigured function blocks for common mechanical assets like pumps and control valves for monitoring the pressure drops of various components, thus providing reliable condition and performance monitoring.

This enables a health evaluation based on an intelligent interpretation of available sensor signal data which is much more cost efficient than the installation of additional condition monitoring equipment like e.g. sound or vibration sensors.

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Taking a Coser Look at Energy

Monitoring energy consumption is more important than ever: Using intelligent power management with energy-efficient components can significantly reduce operating costs; further, it helps to identify plant areas where energy usage has changed, thus indicating problems with devices such as motors and frequency converters.

Tools and methods to identify, manage and control hazards help to keep a plant safe. They can also identify faulty equipment, such as badly adjusted controllers as well as plant areas which do not operate at a defined operating point. The Simatic PCS 7 control system facilitates setting up an environment that protects people, assets and the environment, while detecting deviations in an early state. Suitable recommendations and measures provide the basis to return the plant to a safe operating mode, thus preventing a safety-related shutdown.

* * M. Walzer is Manager Technical Concepts, Dr. Labisch is Project Manager at Siemens' Process Industries and Drives division

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