Hydrocarbon Engineering

March

2017

HYDROCARBON

ENGINEERING

n the process industries, plants must operate not only at

desired capacity, but also at optimal efficiency. This

means predicting undesirable process conditions and

equipment failures before they occur, and then

systematically addressing them as part of a continuous

improvement process. The current approach at many

facilities is to ‘run-to-fail’ since abnormal conditions and

malfunctions are not identified until alarms provide a

warning or something breaks.

A growing number of industrial facilities are exploring

the power of the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) to

optimise their business performance. The IIoT enables

plant operators to improve process reliability by capturing

and analysing data, and then identifying the warning signs

of potential issues – predicting when process adjustment

and equipment maintenance are needed, and

preemptively servicing installed assets before problems

arise.

This article examines the latest techniques, including

Big Data analytics, to enable smart, connected plant

operations. In particular, it describes how the IIoT can

support continuous improvement and address previously

unsolved problems to increase plant availability, safety and

reliability. By taking advantage of streaming data from

sensors and devices to quickly assess current conditions,

recognise warning signs, deliver alerts and automatically

trigger actions, IIoT-based analytics solutions

fundamentally transform production and maintenance

strategies.

lig

In a highly competitive global marketplace, industrial

organisations seek ‘digital intelligence’ to manage and

operate hundreds or thousands of assets from a single site

or across an enterprise to address critical operating

demands. They need effective tools to transform process

data into real-time information regarding process

performance, equipment health, energy consumption and

emissions monitoring.

Plant operators, process and equipment engineers, and

managers require continuous monitoring and surveillance,

notifications, and collaboration with experts so that

appropriate proactive actions can be taken. This will

minimise degradation, poor performance and secondary

damage to equipment to reduce costs, as well as increase

throughput and profits.

In an effort to ensure uptime, companies have

historically sent field technicians out to perform routine

Bart Winters and Francois Leclerc, Honeywell Process Solutions,

present a real-world approach to the Industrial Internet of Things

(IIoT) for process reliability.