One quick example of the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) in action is temperature measurement. Traditionally, these measurements included piping or vessel penetrations, thermowells installed, RTD or thermocouple sensing elements and transmitters, wiring/fittings/junction boxes/conduit/cable trays/etc., marshalling panels and connections in the control system I/O. For critical temperature measurement and control this is still very important to make sure all these things are in place to get these measurements into the system.

But what about temperature measurements that aren’t for critical control such as those for monitoring the trends in equipment health, or those used in energy optimization calculations? Connecting them in wirelessly might save a whole lot of time and costs, or perhaps even make the project economically justifiable—especially if these measurements could be performed without having to cut into the pipe or vessel.

This quick, 1:17 YouTube video on the Rosemount X-Well technology shows key elements of this wireless, non-intrusive temperature measurement approach.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_vI_rYlAkTg

The temperature sensor reads the process fluid temperature through the pipe or vessel wall using a heat flux algorithm. It is connected via a simple clamp-on without requiring any penetrations to the process. These external measurements are also good for challenging temperature measurement applications such as small pipes, corrosive fluids and high velocity flow rates.

These temperature measurements can be sent to the control system or to analytics software and experts to recommend actions in non-normal conditions. The ease in adding these types of measurements create more opportunities to operate the process more safely, reliably and efficiently.

You can connect and interact with other temperature measurement experts in the Temperature group in the Emerson Exchange 365 community.