Fuelling the wireless revolution

By Jeff Becker, Director of Business Development, Marketing for Honeywell Process Solutions

The past several years have given way to numerous announcements from process control system vendors regarding industrial wireless technology. This talk has turned terms such as ‘mesh network’ and ‘interoperability’ into manufacturing industry buzzwords. It has been recognised that the worldwide market for wireless in manufacturing will grow at a compounded annual growth rate of 26 percent over the next five years, and the savings in installation costs will drive significant improvement in process automation, according to the ARC Advisory Group.

How can companies truly begin to decode this new wireless world and choose which wireless solutions (if any) is the right one for them?

Wireless technology is not going to be adopted simply because it is the latest and greatest technology on the market. A wireless technology investment must be made for strategic and business reasons. Reasons for prioritising wireless applications in chemical plants can include identifying where wireless solutions are not ideal or cost prohibitive, identifying applications that involve high energy and natural resource usage, and optimising field worker productivity.

With the recent availability of mesh network solutions, some wireless vendors still expected users to introduce wireless into their plants with small projects aimed at monitoring specific applications and eventually progress to the larger network. However, a surprisingly high number of users are showing interest in the larger networks at the first stage of implementation. This early enthusiasm is indicative of the wireless product evolution. The first generation of products was very sensor specific and not designed to cover entire plants – which was reflected in the smaller purchases. Today, the new generation of products is more appropriate for wider plant deployment and manufacturers are ready to take advantage.

The overarching uses for industrial wireless technology can be grouped into three categories: safety, reliability and efficiency.

Safety
The most obvious benefit of a wireless solution is seen in hazardous areas requiring manual measurements, where wireless sensors can reduce the need for workers to physically put themselves in harm’s way to monitor data points. Less wiring also means less chance for a deadly spark. But there are other innovative ways in which wireless technology can increase plant safety.

Wireless technology also improves the safety through people and asset tracking capabilities. Through the use of various location technologies, new wireless solutions can enable managers to track employees on the plant floor. This capability is crucial in the event of a plant incident because it allows managers to quickly account for their people and better coordinate with emergency responders. This same tracking technology can be used to monitor the movement of hazardous equipment and materials, or even to interlock process steps with a verification that all personnel are in the appropriate place.

Reliability
Equipment used in these conditions will inevitably wear out and need to be replaced, however effective monitoring solutions can help minimise and prevent the effects of natural wear and tear and help to increase plant uptime. Wireless applications can help to ensure that a plant is increasingly reliable and therefore efficient.

Corrosion monitoring can be upgraded to corrosion control, where this method previously relied upon visual inspection and sometimes unit shut down. Companies typically want to take measurements at several points throughout a plant, to increase the value and accuracy of the information available. Many areas that require monitoring however, do not have readily accessible wiring, wireless technology enables manufacturers to monitor multiple points without the cost of wiring and provide a more comprehensive picture of the plant.

Equipment health monitoring can also be expensive and limited to the most critical plant assets. This can leave huge areas of plant equipment with no real health monitoring beyond operator rounds and scheduled maintenance. Wireless can dramatically lower the cost of equipment health monitoring implementation, allowing operators to effectively monitor a greater number of assets within the plant with a compelling economic return. Monitoring of a larger number of assets allows operators to increase uptime while reducing unnecessary maintenance costs.

An innovative benefit for mobile wireless solutions is to enable ‘wireless workers’. By providing personnel with wireless solutions their rounds can become entirely computerised reducing the opportunity for error and speeding up the transition of data from the field to the operator. Wireless workers can monitor more assets with increased speed and accuracy to improve plant reliability.

Efficiency
Increasing the safety and reliability of a plant will inevitably have a positive effect on the efficiency of the systems, and wireless can have a positive impact on the implementation, people and process efficiency.

Increasing the efficiency of deployment immediately delivers cost savings, the cost savings associated with wireless implantation comes from both the efficiency of deployment and the speed of installation. Wireless installations can take as little as a few minutes to deploy, reducing the time from the weeks of approvals and processes that need to be followed for wired installations.

Mobile operators can also become more efficient through the use of mobile technology, those who need a view of the entire process from the control room and to conduct their own rounds in the field. In collaboration with digital cameras operators can visually inspect pieces of equipment for damage, the cameras transmit images back to the control room reducing the amount of time that needs to be spent carrying out rounds.

Process efficiency can also improve as additional measurements provided by wireless technology will enable operators to run their processes more efficiently to improve yield and throughput.

Despite the many benefits, wireless can be a complex enabling technology, and so requires careful research before implementation. If implemented in the correct way, this technology can deliver long-term benefits that directly impact a plant’s bottom line.

Looking at the cost benefits, the example of an ethanol plant tank farm, where large tanks serve as holding stations paints a good picture. Due to the intense vapours emitted from ethanol tanks, these farms are considered an explosive environment and as such digital transmitters must be installed using explosion-proof or intrinsically safe wiring, which raises the cost from about $25-$40 per foot, to around $80-$100 per foot. In these circumstances the installation of a series of wireless transmitters to monitor the tank level will prove an effective, and much more affordable solution. Without wiring to install, the implementation is much easier for vendors and less expensive for operators.

Reduced installation costs however are just one of the visible benefits of industrial wireless solutions. Wireless devices can be installed in systems which they previously haven’t been able to monitor, such as the Ethanol tanks, with the addition of these transmitters companies can more easily keep track of their inventory. By being able to more accurately monitor tank-levels, the company can also streamline and optimise operations.

Industrial wireless solutions can mean anything from a network of transmitters monitoring a single, specific application within a plant to a full-scale wireless mesh network deployed across an entire site to handle multiple applications.

In the early days of industrial wireless the typical purchases were relatively small, over the last four years or so, though, the average number of transmitters purchased has steadily increased. In fact, users’ initial orders have proven to be a very small percentage of the overall wireless technology they eventually purchased.

Mesh networks
Mesh networks are considered the most comprehensive of industrial wireless solutions, in general there are two types of mesh networks, sensor meshes and backbone meshes. Sensor meshes use a series of sensors to communicate with one another in a localised area. Backbone meshes involve powered nodes that communicate with each other across wider distances, connecting various parts of the plant together. These nodes allow thousands of devices from field instruments, mobile worker devices and voice and video communication to co-exist on a single network infrastructure.

Wireless mesh networks are also able to ‘self heal’ in the event of network failure due to an incident such as a backhoe crashing into a node, the signal is rerouted through other points to ensure critical information such as process data is delivered.

Multi-functional mesh networks are deployed for two main reasons, firstly based on the number of points a company wishes to monitor and secondly the high value that is placed on reliable communications. Mesh networks by definition offer multiple redundant paths, this increases reliability compared to non-meshing architecture.

Finally, Wireless technology has the advantage of being able to prepare a plant for the future, and this needs to be taken into consideration for any implementation. Companies need to consider whether they will use the wireless network for a single or strategic network, or whether they want to enable handheld devices to access data and interface with servers over a wireless network.

Many organisations are drafting wireless recommendations and standards as well as offering solutions to help wireless users find the best solutions for their applications.

Last year Honeywell rolled out a standards-based platform that is scalable to 30,000 devices and can stretch a wireless mesh across operations that span miles on a side. This OneWireless infrastructure is a management layer for deployments and isn’t proprietary at the device level, meaning that any number of other manufacturers’ products can be integrated into the overall data exchange framework for any number of purposes.

Deploying wireless technology with a defined strategy will enable an infrastructure that can provide significant benefits that go beyond avoiding the wiring costs – the right decision will help improve safety, optimize the plant and ensure compliance.

For information about Honeywell solutions that improve business performance, visit www.honeywell.com/ps.