Sometimes the problems that limit production in some way are not readily apparent. I recently connected with Emerson's Mark Coughran about his new role in consulting with oil & gas producers on ways to optimize their production. He and other industry consultants...
Advanced Control Team
Energy Efficiency Process Improvements
A quick look at the headlines shows energy prices continuing their high levels. For most process manufacturers, energy is one of the highest operating expenses. I was in meetings last week with several of the industry consultants highlighted on this blog including...
Tuning Considerations in Surge Tank Level Control
Chemical Processing magazine has a great article, Be Levelheaded About Surge-Tank Control. I shared it with Emerson's James Beall asking for his thoughts. He noted that surge tank level control is a common application in many of the process industries. Often a surge...
MPC Control of Level and Other Integrating Processes
I came across an interesting Emerson Exchange presentation, Model Predictive Control for Integrating Processes, by Emerson's Lou Heavner. You may recall Lou from several advanced control-related posts. Lou introduced the subject noting that historically, APC project...
Interesting and Useful DeltaV PID Functions Livestream
Here is our second Emerson Exchange Livestream offering, courtesy of Emerson's James Beall, whom you may recall from earlier control performance posts. His Emerson Exchange presentation was Interesting and Useful Features of the DeltaV PID, Ratio and Bias/Gain Control...
Reducing Loop Interactions and Optimizing LNG Plant Operations
I discovered Nick Denbow's Industrial Automation Insider blog this weekend and added it to my list of automation and process industries-related blogs. He had a post about university students studying the feasibility of using liquefied natural gas (LNG) as a fuel...
Efficiently Cracking Hydrocarbons in Ethylene Furnaces
A few weeks ago, I relayed a story from Emerson's James Beall about a process of ongoing plant control performance improvements on which he's been working with a process manufacturer. He said he had another great story about an ethylene furnace optimization project....
Ongoing Control Performance Improvements
I caught up with Emerson's James Beall, a principal process control consultant who helps manufacturers optimize their processes. You may recall James from numerous control performance-related posts. If you ever attend an Emerson Exchange conference, James is one of...
Neural Network for Product Quality Estimation
Neural networks, not the ones in our brains, but the ones that came out of the artificial intelligence research, began back in the 1940s. This advanced process control (APC) technology has been used in the process industries for many years for applications ranging...
The Case for Control in the Field-based Control
John Rezabek closes his ControlGlobal.com Surprise! Field-Based Control Beats DCS article with the thought: The SP50 committee set out years ago to define and specify a robust, vendor-independent controls suite exploiting the intelligence of microprocessor-based field...
Dispelling a Rules of Thumb in Foundation Fieldbus Segment Sampling Rate
On the Fieldbus Foundation Forums is a recent post, Macrocycle for control in the controller. The post begins: I have seen many posts about scheduling and macrocycle calculation for control-in-the-field (CIF). I have some doubts about control-in-the-controller (CIC)...
Tips When Using DeltaV PID Control
Last year I summarized an Emerson Exchange presentation by James Beall, Advanced PID Functions for Improved Control Performance. At this year's Emerson Exchange, he did a reprise version, Interesting and Useful Features of the DeltaV PID Controller. I'll highlight...
Keep Up to Date With the Latest News and Updates
Follow Us
We invite you to follow us on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and YouTube to stay up to date on the latest news, events and innovations that will help you face and solve your toughest challenges.
Do you want to reuse or translate content?
Just post a link to the entry and send us a quick note so we can share your work. Thank you very much.
Our Global Community
Emerson Exchange 365
The opinions expressed here are the personal opinions of the authors. Content published here is not read or approved by Emerson before it is posted and does not necessarily represent the views and opinions of Emerson.