TECH TALK
The Purpose of Automation Tools and What They Should Deliver
One of the most challenging tasks for the process and power plant design and maintenance industry has always been valve sizing and selection . While understanding the theories of flow control is vital in this industry , it is also important to consider some often-overlooked aspects of the selection criteria and the tools that help avoid common mistakes .
By Alex Koifman , Instrument Management and Business Process Consultant
Historical Progression
It is not uncommon that when the economy is facing challenging times , industry veterans take off their hard hats and decide to enjoy their earned and sometimes delayed retirement . The pandemic disruption of 2020 / 21 saw a steady stream of ‘ right-sizing ’ and early retirement packages offered to many long-term manufacturing employees . This opened a pathway for younger engineers to step up .
The challenge with this phenomenon is that a significant amount of experience and knowhow can be lost with each passing of the hard hat . Today there is a huge proliferation of instrumentation and automation for monitoring and maintaining valves . Cybersecurity , alarm management , field network technologies , advanced process control applications , and remote monitoring solutions , did not exist 30 years ago . This caused great expansion of instrument and valve engineers scope
Figure 1 : Original process conditions , reduced pressure drop at minimum flow and further reduced pressure drop at minimum flow .
and responsibilities diluting the physical valve focus .
As 30 years ago flowmeter or valve sizing was often done by hand , or early computer applications , knowing the flow measurement and control fundamentals was a must for instrument and valve engineers and specialists . Now , many engineers who enter the industry take on the challenges accompanying building and maintaining plants , sometimes without experience and in many cases without even the base skills .
The industry was as much impacted by the globalization and new business practices as it was by the technology advances . Corporate engineering centers that once employed thousands of engineers have given way to turnkey EPC projects , often with fixed cost contract basis . Late 90s and early 2000s saw multi-story buildings filled with engineers working on energy , chemicals , and power projects . This workflow then transitioned to a distributed engineering model where the projects were done
The progression of the ISA name over time , is indicative to this change ; from Instrumentation Society of America in 1945 , to The instrumentation , Systems and Automation Society in 2000 and to The International Society of Automation in 2008 .
and instrumentation and valves were manufactured thousands of miles away from users , sometimes reducing local engineering , sales , and services providers to the role of business , project management and communications experts , which naturally alters their needs for practical skills . That in turn gave the rise to the equipment manufacturers themselves providing more and more added value engineering services to fill in the gaps created by these changes .
Figure 2 : Process data and resulting reliability warning for installed valve that eventually caused an industrial incident .
6 Valve World Americas | September 2022 • www . valve-world-americas . net