Chemical Engineering April 2023 - 17

Newsfront
Process Sensors:
It's All About the Data
Today's process sensors provide a real-time data foundation for asset management and
process optimization across the enterprise
F
or many decades, industrial
process sensors have been
used across the chemical
process industries (CPI) to
measure common process variables,
such as pressure, level, flow
and temperature. These basic measurements
continue to provide the
foundation for basic regulatory control,
advanced process control and
model-predictive control at the loop,
unit and plant levels. But today, the
role of process sensors is expanding
beyond process control to provide
a real-time data foundation for plant
and enterprise asset management
and digital transformation across a
chemical manufacturing enterprise.
Industrial process sensors, increasingly
in combination with new,
low-cost industrial internet of things
(IIoT)-connected sensors, now provide
the diversity of process and
asset-related data needed to implement
the more proactive, conditionbased
maintenance and assetmanagement
strategies
required
for
digital transformation. Accurate
sensor-based data are essential
for developing high-fidelity process
simulations for operator training and
process optimization and to train expert
systems and other artificial intelligence
applications used to help
business managers make better decisions
relative to production scheduling,
asset utilization, risk management,
and so on. Summarizing this
trend, Jack Roushey, an industry
marketing manager at Siemens,
comments: " Digitalization in the
process-measurement portion of industries,
such as chemicals, pharma
and biochem, allows the data that's
being collected to be more efficiently
utilized in such things as predictive
maintenance, developing digital
twins and remote monitoring. "
In recent years, process sensors
and their associated transmitters
have become smarter; more accurate
and reliable (Figure 1); easier to
commission and configure, troubleshoot
and maintain; and more energy
efficient. Thanks to digitalization,
many field instruments now
offer multiple measurements from a
single device, reducing the number
of process penetrations required.
Technology suppliers in the process
sensor space continue to refine
and enhance existing capabilities
and roll out entirely new capabilities.
While current trends relate largely
to improved standards-based interoperability
(see box on p. 19),
wireless connectivity, and more sophisticated
sensor self-diagnostics
and remote condition monitoring
and verification capabilities, some
new sensor technologies are also
emerging. The latter include an increasing
variety of non-contacting
sensors for corrosive processes, insitu
process analyzers and inferential
" soft sensors. "
New wireless solutions
While not a new technology, wireless
connectivity between the field
and plant systems has really taken
off in recent years. While, in the past,
wireless communications
were
used primarily to
monitor assets
or processes
rather than for
mission-critical
process control,
this too is gradually
changing
as technology
suppliers adCHEMICAL
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dress earlier performance, reliability,
determinism, powering and security
concerns. Once a reliable wireless
network infrastructure has been
implemented within a chemical plant
or complex, wireless connectivity is
often significantly more cost-effective
to implement and support than wired
networks. This is particularly true if
field systems are located over wide
areas. According to Jenny Leion, a
chemical industry solutions manager
at Emerson Automation Solutions,
" Within chemical plants, wireless solutions
will be a game changer when
it comes to all these areas that are
today controlled manually (or not at
all) or have only local sensors. "
" We're also seeing increased interest
in applying 5G cellular and
other
traditionally 'non-industrial'
wireless technologies in the chemical
industry, " Leion says. " Bluetooth
technology, for example [Figure 2],
is already commonly used to enable
maintenance technicians to communicate
wirelessly with field devices
over short distances. Wireless
technology can eliminate the need
for the technician to climb to the
top of a large tank, reactor unit, or
distillation column to perform routine
maintenance or troubleshoot
an instrument. "
At this juncture, all major instruSiemens
FIGURE
1. Advanced capabilities available in selected Siemens' pressure transmitters
include higher measurement accuracy, remote diagnostics based on
NAMUR 107 recommendations, and remote safety integrity level (SIL) validation
17
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Chemical Engineering April 2023

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