As staff in process manufacturing and production facilities shrink due to economic or demographic conditions, on-site engineers, operations and maintenance personnel must increase their breadth of skills at the expense of skill depth. In a recent post, Monitoring...
control valve
Monitoring Control Valves with Remote Expertise
An ARC Advisory group study highlighted that "The global process industry loses $20 billion, or five percent of annual production, due to unscheduled downtime and poor quality. ARC estimates that almost 80 percent of these losses are preventable…" Key components in...
Improving Offshore Platform Waterflood System Availability
Emerson's Ryan McIntosh presented, A Deepwater Oil and Gas Platform Realizes an Improvement in Availability. His abstract: A customer was having issues with maintaining control over their waterflood system due to valve failures. This application, key to optimal...
Control Valve Suitability in Safety Applications
Sometimes an email exchange turns up something developed years ago that still has great value. So is this case with an article I received as an attachment on final control elements and their suitability in safety instrumented functions (SIFs), a.k.a. safety loops. The...
Pressure Regulator and Control Valve Best Fit Applications
Managing pressure is a fundamental control challenge for most process manufacturers and producers. A frequent question is whether a pressure regulator or control valve is best for a particular application. At last fall's Emerson Exchange, I live-blogged a great...
Regulators versus Control Valves: What’s the Best Fit?
Keith Erskine with Emerson local business partner Puffer-Sweiven and Vince Mezzano with Fluor discuss considerations in selecting control valves versus regulators for uses on various applications.
Solving a Pipe-Rattling Control Valve
As we close in on the Emerson Exchange conference October 6-10 in Orlando, I wanted to share a problem solving story. This story is typical of what you'll find throughout the weeklong conference. Jeff Wilson, with Emerson's local business partner, Puffer-Sweiven, was...
Howto Video on Pneumatic Valve Positioner Mounting
I knew when my son went to YouTube before coming to me when he needed to learn how to tie a tie--that howto videos were valuable, easily discoverable, and broadly used. I've share examples such as How To Install Micro Motion 9739 MVD Electronic Modules on how process...
Recognition of Effective Predictive Maintenance Program
Control Engineering magazine has a great article and 8-minute video, A Straightforward Maintenance Strategy Yields Improved Plant Performance, featuring Monsanto Muscatine's use of technology to move from reactive to predictive maintenance to improve output and reduce...
Listening for Leaky Valve Seats
Control valves are the workhorses of process automation. They touch the process and execute the control strategy coming from the automation system. Any valve seat leakage can impact the level of control and lead to safety issues, unplanned downtime, quality issues,...
Enjoy New Orleans and Learn Process Automation this Week
I had the pleasure of beginning my process automation career in New Orleans, Louisiana working as a Conoco systems engineer on offshore oil & gas platforms in the Gulf of Mexico. New Orleans' food, festivities, sights and sounds are firmly embedded in my memories....
Sources, Causes, and Ways to Decrease Process Noise Levels
Those that work or have visited industrial processes know how loud they can be with the fluids flowing through the process. Emerson's Fisher Valves & Instruments team has a great piece, The Silent Treatment—Fisher Solutions to Noise Problems. It addresses common...
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.