Blake opens with what poor control may mean: Continue Reading ▶
Proper Valve Selection and Control Strategies in Food and Beverage Processes
Prevent Valve Delamination in Conventional Power Plants
Conventional power plants are being disrupted by an increasing demand for renewable energy. The priority in providing energy to the grid associated with the intermittent intrinsic nature of the renewable energy output is creating a shift from base-load power down to cycling in traditional plants and causing failures.
The demand for renewables is only expected to grow over the next few decades, leaving conventional plant operators to adapt and upgrade their facilities, or suffer failures and their ramifications.
Valves play a major role in plant uptime in conventional plants. Valves manufactured 10 to 15 years ago, however, were not specified to carry the intermittent or low-loads duty of today’s operations, resulting in hardfacing wear. Thus, one of the most impactful steps in minimizing failures is evaluating the plant’s critical valves to identify potential delamination issues.
I suggest that operators should consider three key questions when assessing the risks of premature failure. Firstly, what was the original design specification for the installed valve? Secondly, what was the original valve manufacturer’s practice for hardfacing? And finally, is repairing these valves a definitive solution, or should they be replaced?
Signs of delamination in critical valves requires a complete redesign of the hardfacing process to help reinforce the base material of the valve and ensure it can withstand the new operating conditions. Operators should follow these steps for a successful hardfacing redesign: Continue Reading ▶
5 Questions for Operational Certainty Consultant Sam Thiara
Emerson’s Sam Thiara joins our continuing podcast series, 5 questions for an Emerson Expert. Sam works with manufacturers across the process industries to improve operational performance and achieve top quartile performance.
We’ll have an in-depth podcast in the coming weeks with Sam’s perspectives on how the Operational Certainty consultants on how they work with process manufacturers to achieve and sustain improved performance in safety, energy & emissions, production, and reliability.
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Outlook and Trends for Biotech Industry
What is the 2019 outlook for research & development in the biotech industry? Pharmaceutical Processing magazine explores this question in an article, Outlook 2019: Tech, Data, and Biotech Boom.
On the question of market trends, Bob shared:
There are several key strategies behind the drive toward digital transformation. First, many organizations are making the change from batch to continuous production, particularly in the newest therapies. We expect to see this transition continue, with many plants being built or converted to continuous use facilities over the next three to five years.
What Digital Transformation Could Mean for a Combined Cycle Plant
The growth of renewables and distributed energy resources are challenging the traditional economic models of the utility industry. A growing school of thought in power generation is that embracing some form of digital transformation could very well provide an avenue for better economics. The problem is, though, that digital transformation has been ill defined and the focus is on “the technology” rather than “what it does for a user”. No one is going to deploy these technologies without a clear picture of the value.
Tangible value is available using targeted application of digital technologies and can help a utility spend less on O&M while helping its increasingly smaller workforce do more with less. The best approach that I’ve seen is to start by trying to solve a real problem at a plant. Let me give an example. At one site, the operations staff was stretched too thin and some rounds were late to be gathered and, as because of Murphy’s Law, the calibration gas for their continuous emissions monitoring system (CEMS) ran out. Continue Reading ▶
