You may have seen some of the coverage of last week’s Foundation for Safety Instrumented Functions (SIF) End User Demonstration (DeltaV News, Sound OFF! blog, and ARC’s Larry O’Brien’s blog to name a few.) This event highlighted demonstrations of Foundation Fieldbus Safety Instrumented Systems (FF-SIS) which were held at Shell Global Solutions in Amsterdam, Saudi Aramco in Dhahran, BP in Gelsenkirchen, Germany and Chevron in Houston.
A demonstration version of the Fisher DVC6000f SIS was included at each of the demonstration sites. Also, Emerson participated in the demonstrations of Foundation SIF technology by providing special demo versions of Rosemount, DeltaV, Fisher, and AMS Suite products.
Emerson’s Mike Boudreaux was at this event held in Amsterdam. Mike presented the results of Emerson’s participation the Chevron demonstration held earlier this month. For this demonstration, Emerson provided a logic solver that communicated with field devices using the FF-SIS protocol. Demo versions of devices from various suppliers were specially developed to demonstrate the capabilities of the FF-SIS protocol. The demonstration tested the capabilities of the FF-SIS protocol and interoperability of devices.
These components were included in the demonstration project:
- Rosemount pressure transmitter
- ABB pressure transmitter
- Magnetrol level transmitter
- Siemens level transmitter
- Emerson logic solver
- Fisher DVC6000f SIS control valve
- Westlock positioner
- Pepperl+Fuchs power conditioners with diagnostics
- Fieldbus Diagnostics FF-SIS packet analyzer
- DeltaV HMI and engineering tools
- AMS Suite: Intelligent Device Manager
- Fisher ValveLink SNAP-ON
I hope Mike doesn’t mind, but I’ve lifted the account of the demonstration from his Emerson-internal blog:
The demo system was originally assembled at Emerson in Austin, TX where we did some preliminary testing to make sure that everything worked. When the demo unit was delivered to Chevron, it was set up and running in less than an hour. It was simply a matter of plugging in cables and powering the system up. There were a couple of devices that required software resets, but for the most part the system started up with ease. We used AMS Suite: Intelligent Device Manager for configuring devices and clearing fault states. The functionality of AMS Suite easily transferred to FF-SIS.
We implemented two SIF’s with 1oo2 voting. The first was a high pressure shutdown, acting on the DVC6000f SIS. The second SIF is for a high level shutdown, acting on the Westlock positioner. We tested various trip scenarios. In one case, we demonstrated degraded mode operation, where the voter block was configured to ignore a value if the PV status was bad based on device diagnostics. The function blocks operated as expected, with the same functionality that is available in the DeltaV SIS system today using HART I/O.
In addition to using AMS Suite for configuring devices, we also demonstrated the partial stroke test using ValveLink SNAP-ON. The partial stroke test was executed flawlessly with all of the features of ValveLink available for the FF-SIS device as is already available today through HART or FF. In addition to a standard partial stroke test, we also demonstrated a scenario where a trip occurs during the PST cycle. The valve behaved as it should, aborting the PST and closing the valve.
In his presentation, Mike described how the use of Foundation SIF technology could help process manufacturers to run safer and more reliable processes. His first point was that more advanced diagnostics are available to detect random and systemic failures while reducing spurious trips. Another was that test intervals for final control elements could be increased through the initiation of partial stroke testing from the operator stations. Also, the maintenance of devices involved in the SIFs is simplified with the integration of their diagnostics with the operator stations. This integration also facilitates easier commissioning and testing of these devices.
This end user FF-SIS demonstration testing is another milestone in the path of this technology becoming available for your future process safety applications. End users who participated at the event in Amsterdam indicated that they will continue to internally test the Foundation SIF technology. Most people expect that it will be 2-3 years before an actual implementation will occur in a process manufacturing facility. Key milestones for the future will be the finalization of the FF-SIS specifications, development and testing of commercial devices, and device certification for IEC 61508 compliance.
