Steam is a critical part of many process manufacturing processes and the energy to produce it can be a significant source of operational costs. I recently caught up with process automation hall-of-fame member Greg McMillan and Emerson's Scott Pettigrew at the Emerson...
Greg McMillan
Managing Pressure and Flow Loops on Acid Gas Absorber
At the request of a reader who commented on the last post, here is another of the 11 examples that Emerson's Mark Coughran shared in his Emerson Exchange Denver presentation, Solving Pressure Control Loop Problems in Hydrocarbon Processing Plants. The commenter wrote:...
Critical Techniques to Prevent Process Instability
Greg McMillan, who over the years has worked extensively with the DeltaV technology program and now a modeling and control consultant with Mynah Technologies presented Critical Techniques to Prevent Process Instability at the Emerson Exchange conference in Denver....
Loop Tuning Expertise in Your Pocket
Some of the more popular posts here on the blog involve loop tuning. Our Process Optimization category is filled with more than 150 posts featuring the wisdom of many experienced practitioners. One extremely proficient practitioner and prolific author, Greg McMillan...
Contrasting Advance Regulatory and Advanced Process Control
I wanted to bring additional visibility to a great thread in the LinkedIn Process Control group on advanced regulatory control versus advanced process control. The post, So, ARC Can "Replace" APC? is based on a blog post, Advanced regulatory versus model-predictive...
Does Flow Loop Make Valve Positioner Unnecessary?
In the Process Control LinkedIn group, a question was asked: Positioners seem very popular now, but most lines with valves have flow meters attached. Won't a flow loop make the positioner redundant? When asked for clarification, the original poster explained: As far...
PID Control in 3-Phase Oil and Gas Separation
The PID controller entry in Wikipedia highlights the beginning of proportional+integral+derivative control going all the way back to the 19th century: PID controllers date to 1890s governor design.[2][3] PID controllers were subsequently developed in automatic ship...
Educational Reactor Measurement and Control Book
Last week I highlighted an updated book for process control engineers, Tuning and Control Loop Performance, by Greg McMillan. It's amazing how prolific Greg is, even in his "retirement" over these past several years. I can only aspire to be so active when my golden...
Educational Resource for Tuning and Control Loop Performance
Process automation hall of fame member Greg McMillan has nearly completed an updated version of the book, Tuning and Control Loop Performance: A Practitioner's Guide. It had last been updated back in 1994. You may be familiar with Greg through his blog posts on the...
Setpoint Lead-Lag Question and Answer
I wanted to share this question and answer on setpoint lead-lag, from the Mentoring Engineers discussion group in the Emerson Exchange 365 community. The question: …one of the options you recommend for eliminating overshoot at setpoint changes is using a setpoint...
Accelerating the Process Automation Learning Curve
We continue to hear stories of an increasing experience shortage in the process industries due to the retiring "baby boom" generation. This shortage manifests itself in numerous job openings for process manufacturers and automation suppliers including Emerson Process...
A Unified PID Control Methodology
PID control is the workhorse of process automation. At this week's AIChE 2013 Spring Meeting and 9th Global Congress on Process Safety, Control Talk blog's Greg McMillan and Eastman Chemical's Héctor Torres presented their paper, A Unified PID Control Methodology to...
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