Chemical Engineering April 2012 - 18

Expanded certifications for industrial virtualization
CHEMENTATOR
I
nvensys Operations Management (IOM;
Plano, Tex.; iom.invensys.com), a division
of Invensys, has expanded its certification
for virtualization technology, making its
industrial automation systems the first to
be certified for high availability, disaster
recovery and fault tolerance in supervisory
control applications using both the
VMware and Microsoft Hyper-V virtualization
platforms.
The traditional way to relocate or create
a redundant control server requires buying
new hardware to duplicate the system.
Now, virtualization software can transform
or " virtualize " a computer's hardware (the
CPU, hard drive and network controller) to
create a virtual computer that can run its
own operating system and applications just
like a " real " computer. By sharing hardware
resources with each other, multiple operating
systems can run simultaneously on a
single physical computer. Eliminating the
dependency between the physical hardware
and software yields two important advantages
for control systems: 1) cost savings;
and 2) the ability to move the systems between
host computers, so for example, there
can be fast recovery in disaster situations.
Virtualization software is available from
companies such as Microsoft and VMware.
Invensys' software (ArchestrA System Platform
2012 and Wonderware InTouch 2012)
are the first industrial automation systems
to be certified for use with both Microsoft
and VMware's virtualization software.
Maryanne Steidinger, IOM's director of
product marketing says " Historically, highavailability
and disaster-recovery solutions
in supervisory control systems were expensive
to implement, not only because of hardware
and software costs, but also because
of additional administrative burdens. " Now,
she says, the Invensys platforms are certified
for disaster recovery and high availability
using virtualization software from
two different vendors and " All this is possible
on commercial operating systems using
off-the-shelf hardware, further reducing
cost and easing implementation of missioncritical
applications. "
■
Pyrolysis demo plant
last month, metso Corp. (helsinki,
Finland; www.metso.
com) and Fortum power and
heat (www.fortum.com) signed
a contract for the delivery of
a bio-oil production plant and
a related automation system
to the Fortum power plant in
Joensuu, Finland. Scheduled
for startup in the fall of 2013, the
demonstration plant will have
a nominal output of 30 mw oil
production, and the planned
production will be 50,000 ton/yr
of bio-oil. The bio-oil production
plant will be integrated into a
luidized-bed boiler, in which uncondensed
gases and coke will
be combusted. The demonstration
plant will utilize 225,000 m3/
yr of forest residue and sawdust.
The bio-oil will be produced
by a fast pyrolysis process,
which metso developed in collaboration
with the Technical
research Center of Finland
(VTT), Fortum and Upm. The
development work is based on
the basic research and patents
of VTT.
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Circle 1 on p. 82 or go to adlinks.che.com/40266-01
18 ChemiCal engineering www.Che.Com april 2012
http://www.metso http://www.fortum.com http://iom.invensys.com http://adlinks.che.com/40266-01 http://www.Che.Com
Chemical Engineering April 2012

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