Water & Wastewater

The Metropolitan Cebu Water District (MCWD) needed to improve its water supply system to keep up with the growing demand.
Yokogawa installed field instruments at a total of 143 locations in MCWD’s water distribution network and a SCADA system with water leakage management software at the main office to reduce non-revenue water and improve stability of water supply.

• Integration of the current Bangalore Water Supply and Sewage Board (BWSSB) water and sewage facilities located widely in Bengaluru over VHF and GPRS.
• Stable Centralized SCADA Monitoring Center (CSMC) operation.

- DDMO for the optimization of the air-blowing rate of the aeration tanks
- Interlink between DCS and DDMO to maximize the energy saving effect

• The aging DCS system was replaced with an integrated control system for all processes at the Siheung water treatment plant.
• Powerful Modbus communication function of STARDOM enables integration with the existing HMI via the OPC gateway.

RDR operates total 67km long race and supplies irrigation water to vast agricultural land in NZ's South Island.

FAST/TOOLS and STARDOM RTU were selected for management of the race and hydropower systems.

• To bring the customer a real-time monitoring and management capability, Yokogawa installed STARDOM (FCJ), flow meters, and transmitters at key points throughout the distribution network.
• The STARDOM FCJ controllers achieved an accurate water loss management system while keeping the running costs to a minimum.

Water Supply Treatment
FAST/TOOLS, STARDOM, Flowmeters, Liquid Analyzers

• Bali's water treatment plant decided to employ the latest reliable control system in order to increase availability and quality of operation.
• Centralized control system using FAST/TOOLS provides the sophisticated and flexible operation.

• More than 1,000 field devices designed to the PROFIBUS specifications installed in the state-of-the-art water reclamation plant.
• The high reliability and accuracy of our field devices contributes to the minimization of maintenance costs over the entire plant lifecycle.

• Innovative GEOLIDE waste water treatment complex in Marseille uses CENTUM and Exaquantum. 
• The visualization of all data on items such as motor and pump operating time and chemical consumption amount allows operators to optimize key operation items.

• Reliable monitoring and control system of the world's first, 16" seawater reverse osmosis (SWRO) membrane desalination plant.
• Accurate measurements of the SWRO parameters with Yokogawa conductivity meters, pH meters, and magnetic flow meters contribute to a longer SWRO membrane life and reduce Total Cost of Ownership.

Are you in the dilemma of retraining your instrument technicians and engineers since Moore Products has discontinued the Moore 352B & 352E? Are the Moore 352PLUS™ or 353 really your only choices? We have a better solution for you. Yokogawa's new US1000 digital PID loop controller provides more bang for the buck.

Removal of free oil and grease from a wastewater stream reduces the potential for equipment problems to occur further downstream. There are three forms of oil encountered in wastewater treatment at a refinery. 

DP Level transmitter configuration can be very time consuming. Yokogawa DPharp EJA/EJX Pressure transmitters realize reduction in man hours by smart level setup feature.

Fish perform all their bodily functions in water. Because fish are totally dependent upon water to breathe, feed and grow, excrete wastes, maintain a salt balance, and reproduce, understanding the physical and chemical qualities of water is critical to successful aquaculture. To a great extent water determines the success or failure of an aquaculture operation.

Due to revisions and additions to regulations, pumps used in water, sewerage, and drainage systems require flexible modifications and additional measurement points in their performance inspections.

In response to these changes in the environment and circumstances, the compact size of the Multi-Sensing Remote I/O Analog Sensing Unit VZ20X reduces the burden of expanding and reconstructing production and test equipment to fit the current installation environment.

The ADMAG AXR is the world's first 2-wire magnetic flow meter which employs the unique "Dual Frequency Excitation Method," achieving 0.5% of rate of best-in-class accuracy and excellent stability for process measurement. In addition, the newly developed AXR key technologies," achieves the same level of noise immunity as 4-wire type under the fluid condition change and delivers enough performance to meet the requirement to apply in the control loop.

Reverse osmosis (RO) is a separation process that uses pressure to force a solution through a membrane that retains the solute on one side and allows the pure solvent to pass to the other side. More formally, it is the process of forcing a solvent from a region of high solute concentration through a membrane to a region of low solute concentration by applying a pressure in excess of the osmotic pressure.

Both centrifigal and axial compressors cannot be allowed to operate below the surge limit of the operating conditions. The machinery may be exposed to excessive stress and vibration. If the discharge flow demand is less than the compressor surge limit, some of that flow must be vented or recycled to the inlet to stay above surge.

Automated control of industrial boilers is an excellent application for YS1700 microprocessor-based loop controllers. These instruments can be programmed to perform the operations of plant master, boiler master, fuel and air control with oxygen trim and drum level/feedwater control.

Cyanide-bearing wastewater from mining and electroplating facilities and certain types of chemical plants is toxic and must be treated by oxidation with chlorine or chloride to bring the cyanide concentration within regulatory limits.

Industry:Electrical and Electronics

Wastewater from electroplating facilities and certain types of chemical plants contains toxic forms of hexavalent chromium such as chromate and dichromate. The hexavalent chromium in this wastewater must be reduced before the water can be discharged. This requires a two-step process: hexavalent chromium (CR₆) is reduced to trivalent chromium (CR₃); and CR₃ is precipitated as chromium hydroxide.

Industry:Electrical and Electronics

YS100 series instruments are stand alone devices that control or indicate process variables throughout a manufacturing plant. RS485 communications cards can be optionally provided to transfer data from each instrument digitally to a PC-based operators station. Below is a typical system configuration to transfer data bi-directionally through this communications bus.

Japan's Potable Water Quality Standard was fully revised in 2004, increasing the number of water quality standard items for which tests are required has increased to 50. As items necessary for water quality management, the authority has specified an additional 27 complementary parameters to set the targets for water quality management.

The control of the world's water resource is arguably one of the most important issues. Water demand from industry and domestic users is set to rise throughout the industrialized world. Yokogawa has been applying minimized maintenance measurement systems.

The discharge of improperly treated industrial chemicals and fuel gas can have a major impact on the environment, posing a serious threat to public health. Concurrent with the global growth of manufacturing operations to keep pace with market trends, many countries are taking measures to deal with environmental problems.

What is screen differential control? This is a control application commonly found at utility plants located on rivers, lakes and other large bodies of water and at industrial facilities where a large amount of cooling water is used. Screen differential control and monitoring is needed to prevent damage to rotating screens caused by excessive pressure being applied by debris collecting on the screens.

Taking advantage of sensors already available in your system, you can simply add VJ series signal conditioners or the UM33A Digital Indicator with Alarms to easily build a monitoring system on a PC.

ISA100 Wireless Temperature and Pressure Transmitters

• Gateway x1, Temperature Transmitter (YTA) x1, Pressure Transmitter (EJX) x1

High quality wireless communication confirmed

• Packet Error Rate (PER) is 0 to 2.5%/ 5 days

The US1000-11 Digital Indicating Controller can be programmed to provide two functions, as a heat exchanger temperature controller and a BTU calculator. Why perform both functions? The temperature control is used to maintain a constant product temperature on the discharge side of the heat exchanger.

You can measure and monitor integral flow (total and excess flow). You can also calculate the flow integral and excess usage with computation functions, and generate reports with the Report function. With the Excel template function, you can create templates in a desired report format for creating reports automatically.

Data acquired on the SMARTDAC+ GM can be easily monitored through the company network, even from remote locations.

Many industrial plants have embedded the PID controls for flow, temperature, pressure, level, etc. in PLC's on the plant floor. In the event of a PLC failure, the control to these critical loops may be lost. The US1000-11 may be configured to act as an automatic backup station and operator interface if PLC service has failed.

Environmental data (water quality, amount of flow) is measured on-site and monitored from an office.

Weir-type flow volume calculation using the M series Free Programmable MXS (or VJXS) Computing Units

STARDOM field control node (FCN) autonomous controllers allow both Modbus master and slave functions to run simultaneously.

When used to measure the dissolved oxygen in an aeration tank, sensors tend to quickly become contaminated and need frequent cleaning.

The detectors used to perform dissolved oxygen (DO) measurement in oxidation ditch type sewage treatment plants tend to become dirty quickly and require frequent cleaning.

Supervising and control water flow over the geographically distributed area is important to prevent fluid loss and disaster for fiscal and safety reasons.

With industrial and economic development comes increasingly large and advanced power plants and factories. Nevertheless, we find many cases where the original cables, cable tunnels, and other components of the power infrastructure have languished under continuous operation.

A Midwest customer is a leading salt manufacturer. They produce a variety of salt products including table salt, pool salt and industrial grade salt. This customer needed to bring data from existing Yokogawa DAQSTATIONS into their Delta V system.

The ammonia (NH₃) gas is injected to remove the NOx and thus reduce the NOx concentration in the stack flue gas. With conventional NH₃ analyzers that perform measurements indirectly, NH₃ concentrations are obtained through a sampling system. Therefore, there are problems with the maintenance and running costs of the sampling system, and time delays in measurement. The TDLS8000 Laser Analyzer is the solution to all these problems.

A manufacturer of lime using an Allen-Bradley Series 5 PLC wanted local data viewing and network connectivity. The PLC was wired directly to a rotary kiln and measured kiln temperature, pressure, rotary speed and material feed rate.

The boiler combustion control system is designed to maintain a proper air/fuel mixture under varying load conditions and within safe limits. The system should provide nearly complete fuel combustion as efficiently as possible. Discussions here are limited to oil and/or natural gas fired industrial boilers. 

Due to current events of target virus attacks such as Stuxnet and Flame, the demand for cyber security has become high priority within Industrial Automation (IA). Since the beginning of IA, the global approach for security technologies has been reserved. There was a valid reason for the industry wide reticence, given that there were no direct vulnerabilities.

Virtualization and Cloud Computing are becoming common terms. Global leaders in Information Technology (IT) advertise with their new solutions of Virtualization and Cloud Computing.

Virtualization and Cloud Computing are becoming common terms. Global leaders in Information Technology (IT) advertise with their new solutions of Virtualization and Cloud Computing.

Both centrifigal and axial compressors cannot be allowed to operate below the surge limit of the operating conditions. The machinery may be exposed to excessive stress and vibration. If the discharge flow demand is less than the compressor surge limit, some of that flow must be vented or recycled to the inlet to stay above surge.

Yokogawa enjoyed strong sales of its line of YS80 instruments from their inception in 1980 to discontinuation in 2008. Thousands of the SLCD (single loop controller) and SLPC (programmable controller) where sold in the United States. As parts began to become scarce, the next generation of high-end controller was designed and released as the YS100 series.

For nearly 100 years, ozone has been used all over the world for water sanitation. It is nature's strongest oxidizer and has a byproduct of pure oxygen. Chlorine, on the other hand, is a very effective, time-proven chemical, but is ineffective against hard-to-kill microorganisms such as cryptosporidium; it also has some unpleasant byproducts. Ozone is recognized among the strongest, fastest, commercially available disinfectants and oxidants for water treatment, Ozone is used in both the disinfection of drinking water and bacterial killer in waste water treatment. Ozone is used in a large percentage of Municipal water treatment facilities as well as Pharmaceutical companies where pure water is essential.

When used to measure the dissolved oxygen in an aeration tank, sensors tend to quickly become contaminated and need frequent cleaning. A cost-effective solution to this problem has finally been found with the development of the Yokogawa DO402 Dissolved Oxygen Converter system. 

Steam drum level control is necessary to add makeup water as steam is delivered into the header and to the associated process equipment. The system should control the drum level at a specific set point while compensating for varying steam demands and drum pressures. For a given volume of steam and blowdown leaving the steam drum, an equal amount of water should replace that inventory.

YS1000 Series instruments can accept ONE direct input when a signal conditioning option is specified. The direct input replaces one of the non-isolated 4 to 20mADC (using a 250Ω shunt resistor) or 1 to 5VDC inputs. YS1700 can accept five analog inputs. YS1500 can accept four and YS1310, YS1350, YS1360 can accept two analog inputs. In all cases, one input can be signal conditioned.

Most SLPC and YS170 controllers in the field contain a custom program stored on an EPROM in the case of the SLPC and in NVRAM in the case of the YS170. When upgrading from an SLPC or YS170 to a YS1700, it is necessary to either rewrite the program in YS1700 language or convert the program from SLPC or YS170.

The detectors used to perform dissolved oxygen (DO) measurement in oxidation ditch type sewage treatment plants tend to become dirty quickly and require frequent cleaning. It has been d ifficult to remedy this problem inexpensively. One solution that significantly reduces the sensor maintenance workload is the use of float holders.

Hydrogen is the simplest and smallest atomic element. Water, acids, bases, and the immense family of organic compounds all contain hydrogen. Even though hydrogen is not corrosive, it can cause problems for pressure transmitters through Hydrogen Permeation.

A common application for Yokogawa Corporation of America PROPLUS series is for monitoring & alarming. In these applications, the meter is not used as a primary controller, but a safety device. As such, Yokogawa added another safety feature called Interlock Relay.

Optimizing four key factors will decrease pH sensor costs and optimize process control and overall plant efficiency.

From engineering to installation, commissioning, operations, and maintenance, FOUNDATION fieldbus offer significant cost reductions of 30 percent or more versus conventional analog systems. Many of these cost reductions come from the advanced functions that fieldbus offers versus analog technology.

The world of process automation is governed by procedures. While we like to refer to the process industries as being largely "continuous", this could not be further from the truth. Process manufacturing is constantly in flux.

The worlds of process automation and production management have been converging for some time. What once used to be islands of automation and production management functionality connected through highly proprietary integration schemes that were costly to maintain have developed into integrated platforms that provide seamless data exchange between the world of automation and the plant floor, the functions of production and operations management, and integration with business level systems.

This white paper provides an overview of how Yokogawa believes its customers can best prepare for and position themselves to benefit from IIoT-enabled technology and solutions and digitalization in general to emerge as the successful connected industrial enterprises of the future.

Yokogawa’s industrial automation (IA) product and service offerings, industry domain knowledge, and VigilantPlant approach – which emphasizes safe, secure, and uninterrupted operations -- provide a solid foundation for an Industrial Internet of Things that specifically addresses the requirements of process automation, particularly for the OT side of the equation.　To be able to provide an equally solid foundation for the IT side, Yokogawa is partnering with Cisco Systems and other industry leaders.

By understanding what causes the difficulties in pH measurements and having the proper equipment, stable and accurate pure water pH measurement can be accomplished.

The automation suppliers that will be successful in the long term will be those that effectively address application or industry specific problems for end users with a value proposition that cannot be ignored. These problems exist throughout the process industries today, and they won't be solved by simply offering a product, but through a combination of hardware, software, services, application expertise, and knowledge.

In ARC's view, customers need a compelling business value proposition to justify investment in any kind of automation. Vigilance and VigilantPlant were created with this in mind. Yokogawa's vision with VigilantPlant is to create an environment where plant personnel and operators are well informed, alert, and ready to take action. 

Yokogawa has come a long way in making its message clear to the world of process automation. Last year, the company embarked on a full-scale global marketing campaign to make customers aware of the company's focus on system reliability, security, dependability, and robustness. Dubbed "Vigilance", the campaign created a unified message for the company and greatly helped expand awareness of the Yokogawa brand and corporate philosophy.

Process automation end users are under more pressure than ever to do more with less. The current economic climate means that many automation capital projects are on hold. With capital budgets tighter than ever, users instead focus on operational budgets (where cost cutting is also a key concern), or on automation investments with a very rapid return on investment.

In today's dynamic industrial marketplace, the only constant is change. Raw material costs, energy costs, market demands, environmental and safety regulations, technology, and even the nature of the labor force itself are constantly changing, and not always in predictable directions.

Discovering your Baseline with OT Security Risk Assessment

We have developed the "Econo-Pilot" energy-saving system for water pumps, which reduces the power consumption of motors for water supply. In the energy-saving control field, the conventional method used is that of constant pressure control of the water supply with inverters.

Recently, there is an increasing demand for operation and monitoring of all the various controllers distributed in the field on the same screens to improve plant operation efficiency. The purpose of the Unified Gateway Station (UGS) is to connect external controllers, such as the STARDOM's FCN/FCJ autonomous controllers and other vendors' controllers, to the CENTUM VP integrated production control system and to operate and monitor those external controllers on the Human Interface Station (HIS) screens, the operation and monitoring screens for the CENTUM VP.

The reverse osmosis (RO) membrane is in use today as a main component of water filtering equipment, because it has a fairly high performance record in removing various impurities such as salt from water. Especially in isolated islands and desert regions where there is no other choice but to utilize seawater as the only water resource, the RO membrane is an indispensable component of the RO module for water purification systems.

One solution packaged for production control systems today is a system comprising a PLC and SCADA (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition) software that runs on a PC. An advantage of these systems is that they can be configured at considerably lower cost than systems that use dedicated devices as they use commercially available PCs.

The engineering phase holds the largest ratios in control system configuration in terms of both time and money, so improving engineering efficiency is one of the biggest issues when it comes to system integration. In the STARDOM, Application Portfolios (APPF) are devised to dramatically slash engineering costs and increase software reliability.

As the world's societies become more connected, market competition is becoming more ruthless and transactions are performed at ever increasing speeds. Deregulation has ignited global competition throughout the world. The proliferation of Information and Internet technologies have accelerated the growth of global competition, with life cycles for high tech products having lives measured in "dog years" (in each normal year they advance seven years).

We have developed the FCN (field control node) and FCJ (field control junction) autonomous controllers as the core of STARDOM, a solution that actualizes a network-based control system (NCS) Yokogawa proposes for increased production efficiency.

PC software as the front end of a recorder has become more and more important recently in the industrial measurement field as the personal computer becomes increasingly popular. In the past, we were making efforts to develop PC software for acquiring, viewing and setting data for a single recorder only.

YOKOGAWA has successively released the DARWIN series (DA100/DC100/DR130, 230, and 240) as network- connectable data acquisition instruments, the DAQSTATION DX series as key industrial recorders, the MobileCorder MV series as measurement recorders, and the DAQSTATION CX series, a new product that comes with a PIC control function in addition to having the functionality of the industrial recorders.

Yokogawa Electric Corporation released the μR and VR series of industrial recorders to meet user demands for monitoring and recording field data. Since then, the recorders have been in wide use in a variety of industries.

Yokogawa's industrial recorders have been widely used in order to monitor and record data acquired from the field. Concurrently, sensors in the field have been made increasingly intelligent and come to hold not just "data" but "information" of additional value provided by such functions as failure detection and statistical analysis.

Yokogawa has set a new standard in data acquisition by rolling out the DARWIN series in 1995. The concept behind DARWIN is to offer features that are normally conflicting such as data acquisition that is easy-to-use yet highly expandable, by combining a data acquisition engine, a measuring unit with display and output mechanisms.

Many signal conditioners have been used on the input and output sections of large-scale distributed control systems (DCSs) for isolation purposes. Recently personal computer-based instrumentation and measurement systems have become popular and brought with them significant functional enhancements.

Yokogawa Electric Corporation, one of the leading manufacturers of industrial recorders, put the DAQSTATION DX series stations on the market in 1999, which added information processing and transmission functions to conventional recorders.

Wireless technology has a long history, and it began around the time that James C. Maxwell theoretically predicted and then proved the existence of electromagnetic waves in the 1860s, and when Heinrich R. Hertz experimentally confirmed the actual existence of the electromagnetic wave in 1888.

The innovation of wireless technology increases the use of wireless communication in the industry. The introduction of wireless communication to plants, however, requires strict features such as robustness, real-time responsiveness, and low power consumption. This has restricted the use of wireless communication to limited applications such as data logging and device status monitoring that does not require strict real-time responsiveness and data arrival reliability in communication.

One of Yokogawa's corporate philosophies is to contribute to society through broad-ranging activities in the areas of measurement, control, and information. To achieve this philosophy in the control industry, Yokogawa launched CENTUM, the world's first distributed control system (DCS), in 1975.

The manufacturing industry has grown based on solid production technologies for creating quality products. However, the economic environment is changing dramatically, forcing manufacturing firms to face tough global competition; firms must ship the right products at the right time as the market requests.

CENTUM VP is a next-generation Integrated Production Control System which provides solutions to improve operation efficiency (Operational Excellence) based on Yokogawa's VigilantPlant concept. In the development of Integrated Production Control Systems, we have expanded the functions of the Human Machine Interface (HMI) maintaining the main essence of CENTUM series, regardless of the changes of platforms.

As controlled objects have become more complex, plant operation schemes more concentrated, and plant operators fewer in number, the degree of engineering for a distributed control system (DCS) has both multiplied and diversified. Despite this, systems are required to be configured in a shorter time while engineering results are required to be of higher quality.

Yokogawa Electric has been using Pair & Spare method as a reliability-enhancing technology for its line of distributed control systems (DCS) since the release of the CENTUM CS in 1993. As a result, the system has achieved an availability factor of seven 9's (99.99999%) for the record of operation to date.

As more fieldbus devices are made practicable, demand is increasing for a distributed control system (DCS) which integrates fieldbus devices in its engineering, operation, and monitoring environments. Conventionally, control has been implemented by the dual-redundant CPUs and control bus within a DCS; however, sufficient reliability must be ensured even when it is distributed over field networks.

The recent increase of devices enabled for a field network such as the FOUNDATION™ Fieldbus is phenomenal. This has been amplifying a requirement for distributed control systems (DCSs) to be capable of constituting a more pliant and efficient production control system by means of flexible connections to field networks in addition to traditional 4 to 20 mA signals.

In order to run 24 hours a day in large-scale plants, such as an oil-refinery or others, a distributed control station (DCS) requires high reliability. In the CENTUM DCS from Yokogawa Electric Corporation, high reliability of each device and a network (bus) connecting devices have been realized by using techniques such as a dual CPU, dual I/O, and a dual communication bus since sales began in 1975.

FCSs, the control stations in a CENTUM CS system, have already demonstrated that they are highly reliable, effective and maintainable. These advantages are the result of such features as the dual-redundant hardware configuration, the online modification of application data, and so on.

The environment surrounding process control systems has changed dramatically as the performance of personal computers improves and the Windows operating system advances, there has been a move towards the trend of open architecture. As we are already aware, in addition to the traditional high reliability level and the unique operability there has been an increase in demand for the interoperability of human- machine interfaces (HMI), which are responsible for the operation and monitoring of our distributed control system (DCS).

Report functions in process control are often positioned as part of the logger functions. However, plant operation data in a batch process should be not only logged regularly but also acquired and managed for each batch execution. The report function for logging plant operations in a batch process mainly comprises a function to print out plant operation data collected for each batch execution, and there are various approaches available to implement this function.

Since their conception in 1975, distributed control systems (hereinafter, referred to as DCSs) have been changed drastically in accordance with the rapid advancements in computer technology. In terms of hardware technology, the development of microprocessors, memory devices, and communication devices has been significant in regard to both quality and quantity.

Drastic changes in the economy of manufacturing industries, has led to increasing demand for plant operations to reduce personnel, improve efficiency, and increase the operation rate of facilities. On the other hand, for plants to operate safely, improvements in reliability and operational safety cannot be neglected.

In this day and age, just simply buying a personal computer, taking it home and turning it on will enable you to be taken to the world of Internet. In such an era, communication connection capability and prospects is increasing in importance. DCSs are no exception for concern.

To date, Yokogawa has focused on DCS (Distributed Control System) which control the entire power generation plant, including boilers, in the electric power industry. In contrast, turbomachinery control has been handled by turbine manufacturers, but as the electric power market has been active internationally, especially in China and India, in recent years, Yokogawa has been developing turbomachinery control systems to to further develop the electric power industry.

For a transfer system in a plant, such as a transfer between tanks in a brewery, the transfer of pellets in a pneumatic transport system, or the transfer of oil at an offsite location, it is necessary to monitor the open/close status of valves or the on/off status of motors or blowers in reference to the transfer pattern (a combination of the transfer source(s) and destination(s), route, etc.).

Recently, manufacturing industries are trying to slash the total cost of ownership (TCO). Batch processes are not exceptions. Until recently, in comparison to continuous processes, batch processes have generally not yet undergone systematization and standardization.

The manuals of control systems such as a DCS provide a vast amount of information depending on their multi-functionality and functional integration. A conventional large-scale control system our company offers comes with more than 10,000 pages of paper documents.

As industrial plant systems have increased in scale and their automatic control algorithms advanced, today's operators are required to have more advanced skills and knowledge of theplant systems and to learn the actions to be taken in response to any possible situations including emergencies.

To improve efficiency and quality in the DCS application coding and inspection phases for an entire CENTUM CS system, engineering tools have been developed, along with the training required to operate these tools. In consideration of the time needed for development, the need for adequate operability, the basis of standard CS software architecture, and the use of freeware (e.g., Perl² and Tcl/Tk³), we began development of these engineering tools with the objectives to reduce development costs and increase efficiency.

A fieldbus is a bidirectional, multidrop, digital communication system developed to replace the conventional 4-20 mA communication lines that connect intelligent field devices with a control system. Fieldbus is continually reviewed in an effort to standardize the fieldbus specifications to comply with the specifications of the IEC and ISA.¹

The development of communications technologies has formed a system structure known as the communication network. This network has not only established itself in the industrial world but also in the general household. The recent spread of technologies such as the Internet has been quite spectacular.

The first stage in creating next-generation production control system that achieves innovative plant operation is providing "Visualized operation". "Visualized operation" for the customer means that he can reliably access and visualize plant data regardless of plant location and time.

A communication system for connecting stations in the system plays an important role in a distributed control system (DCS). The communication system determines the superiority or inferiority of the entire control system. In DCS communication as represented by CENTUM, a token-passing system and dual bus have been developed.

It goes without saying that the reduction of the total cost of ownership (TCO) for various facilities and equipment is an important objective for most enterprises, and distributed control systems (DCSs) are no exception.

Progress in digital signal processing and network technologies has enabled advanced functions which cannot be achieved by traditional field devices with 4-20 mA signal, to be implemented on field devices. Standardization of international fieldbus specifications, notably the FOUNDATION™ Fieldbus, has enabled users to build optimum field networks comprised of freely chosen field devices from various device vendors.

Differential pressure transmitters, which serve as the core of field instrumentation, are widely used to measure the flow rate, pressure and density of liquids, gases and steam, as well as the level of liquid in a tank.

Field instruments are expected to be equipped with diagnostic functions to predict abnormal process conditions, and are also expected to expand these functions. The ability to extract diagnostic information for prediction and prevention from various physical process quantities measured by devices and make it available allows the user to reduce non-essential and non-urgent maintenance and thus cut maintenance costs.

Safe plant operation has long been pursued in all industries. Specifically, in the process automation industry which involves many hazardous elements, safety measures including explosion-protected systems have been adopted based on numerous tragic experiences.

When evaluating mass flow rates using a primary device such as an orifice or nozzle in a differential pressure flow meter in order to make fluid density compensations, the upstream pressure (static pressure) and fluid temperature are measured in addition to the output of a regular differential pressure transmitter.

Since the release of the DPharp EJ series in 1991 and the DPharp EJA series in 1994, nearly 1.2 million of these transmitters have been operating all over the world. Recently, we have also developed the EJX series of even more compact, lightweight and advanced transmitters with multi- sensing capabilities built using silicon resonant sensor technology.

In recent years, more field wireless devices have been used in hazardous areas. Meanwhile, in plants that are usually recognized as hazardous areas, there are numerous metallic tanks and pipes that easily shield or reflect radio waves, as discussed later, thus resulting in a poor environment for wireless communication.

In 1988, Yokogawa launched the ADMAG series of magnetic flow meters with increased resistance to fluid noise and zero stability, employing dual frequency excitation which was developed based on its long-cultivated technology for flow measurement. Since then, the ADMAG family has augmented its application range with such models as explosion-proof and integral types, and a capacitance type.

For large scale geographically dispersed projects, there may be a hierarchy of individual Process Automation systems, which in turn are each responsible for a specific region, and are managed by a higher level system. Engineering of systems on this scale is a huge challenge, because each individual system has its own database and its own configuration.

The rapid evolution of information technology (IT) has made possible the transmission of a wide range of information in a short period of time, resulting in the transformation of society in aspects such as logistics and business styles. During this transformation, quick assessment of the circumstances and prompt actions were also required in the production lines, making real-time collection of field information indispensable.

There has been increasing demand for cost reductions and lower-priced products in the manufacturing industry, and maintaining cost competitiveness and achieving optimum costs have become necessary for the survival of manufacturers. This calls for minimizing TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) over the whole life cycle of plants and maximizing TVO (Total Value of Ownership).

Process automation involves both operation and maintenance. Plant operation and monitoring are mainly conducted by a control system such as CENTUM, while equipment maintenance is handled by Plant Asset Management (PAM) such as Plant Resource Manager (PRM).

As compared to Distributed Control Systems (DCS) such as CENTUM VP that monitors the operations of the overall plant, PRM is a type of Plant Asset Management (PAM) software package that primarily focuses on the maintenance of devices and instruments.

Asset Excellence (AE) provides a set of solutions for maintaining a plant in good condition at reasonable cost to ensure that it works as a production infrastructure. To reduce maintenance costs without causing a risk to production, it is necessary to change from breakdown maintenance to predictive or preventive maintenance.

Yokogawa Electric Corporation promotes the standardization of FOUNDATION™ fieldbus as the communication foundation supporting Asset Excellence for VigilantPlant, which is an approach aimed at the advancement of plant instruments and equipment. With the recent dramatic advancement of fieldbus technologies, information processing technologies, and network speed, it has become possible to process various kinds of information inside the field sensors and transmit the results to the distributed control system (DCS) and host computer.

In plant sites, there are various places such as those affording an unobstructed view like tank yards, and others surrounded by metal pipes and equipment obstructing the view (hereafter referred to "pipe jungles"), often seen in oil refinery and chemical on-site plants. The frequency band of radio waves used for field wireless communication is 2.4 GHz, which has high straightness and its ability to go around things can hardly be expected.

Yokogawa has been offering the EXA200 series two- wire liquid analyzer for processes since 1990. This analyzer has been used in various fields including the quality control of raw materials in process plants in the electric power and petrochemical industries, reaction management of products, quality control in waste water facilities, and quality monitoring of river water and tap water.

The changes in social environment, such as globalization of enterprise activities, depletion of natural resources, and eco-oriented movement will affect the structure of mass production. Control systems must be prepared with flexibility and scalability in both size and function to adjust to the changes.

The process industry in Japan faces increasingly critical environmental and safety issues. Additionally, in Japan, many skilled engineers with years of experience will be retiring in 2007. Although the process industries such as petroleum, petrochemical, steel and paper, etc., are highly automated, human skill is still required in an abnormal situation or for a critical production change.

In 2005, Yokogawa announced "VigilantPlant" as a concept to ward the realization of a type of plant operation that is considered ideal by our customers.

The purpose of blending in a petroleum refinery is to mix semi-finished products that have been rectified during various refining processes so as to manufacture a product that meets specification.

In order to meet user needs, the Green series of controllers has not only been equipped with control computation systems, "Super" overshoot suppressing function and generous alarm functions proven on existing models, but have also been fitted with a number of new functions. communication, ladder communication and coordinated operation.

As a company that has strong relationship with nature and provides products using nature's blessings, Mercian Corporation is committed to the environment. Its environmental philosophy is "Mercian thanks nature's blessings and capability that sustain life, and seeks to balance environmental preservation with creating an affluent society."

Due to the rising energy demand in emerging countries in recent years, the amount of oil and gas production has been increasing, thus investment in the development of new oil and gas fields and replacement of old facilities has been booming.

Recipe management software refers to the computer software used to manage product names and their corresponding recipes and set the recipe data in the control system in order to control the operations of a plant in which multiple materials are blended to manufacture a number of different products.

The development of the CENTUM CS 1000 distributed control system for small- and medium-scale plants was based on two basic design principles: 1) to have the same architecture as the CENTUM CS and 2) with the objective of becoming a global product.

As for a controller used in a distributed control system (DCS) shown in Figure 1, covering as many applications as possible with a single controller will bring cost reduction effects such as easy engineering and a small controller installation area. Therefore, the controller is required to process large amounts of data more quickly.

More than ten years have passed since the first digitized field devices were introduced. These support either a hybrid communication protocol such as HART or a full digital communication protocol such as FOUNDATION Fieldbus.

The specifications of the ISA100.11a wireless communication standard of the International Society of Automation (ISA) for industrial automation were published, and companies are developing products based on the standard. The ISA100.11a has many features such as high reliability including redundancy, network scalability, and support for various protocols for industrial automation.

For safe plant operations, it is critical to correctly understand the conditions encountered by operators inside the plants. In relation to this topic, human cognition has been studied in various fields such as human factors and ergonomics.

The business world surrounding the manufacturing industry is undergoing rapid and drastic changes. Achieving production activities that can respond swiftly to such environmental changes has become an urgent task.

As field instrumentation devices become increasingly digitized and computerized, interactive and remote access to a large quantity of field information becomes possible. This will increase the efficiency of plant equipment maintenance by reducing labor requirements in field patrol work for example. 

The requirements for water supply and sewage services are becoming increasingly strict, such as consolidation of facilities, operational efficiency, lower cost, and information transparency due to stagnant demand. There is also demand for greater use of information technologies (IT), encouraged by the government's e-Japan strategy.

After having undergone several improvements, magnetic flow meters have become highly accurate and reliable and are widely used in the industrial instrument field today. Magnetic flow meters consist of a detector and a converter, with the principle of the detector adopting Faraday's electromagnetic induction law.

The introduction of wireless technologies into plants is anticipated as one of the measures for implementing field digital solutions not only to reduce cable wiring costs but also to improve plant wide safety/stable operations, operating efficiency, and so on.

Yokogawa proposed the VigilantPlant concept as an ideal plant that achieves fully optimized operation where all the necessary information is given to all the operators involved in the plant operation. In VigilantPlant, operators are able to quickly respond to changes in the external environment while the production activities run without any interruption.

Industrial automation (IA) systems and products, which utilize measurement, control and information technologies, are used across the world as fundamental infrastructure for achieving safe, stable and highly efficient plant operation. In order to keep the systems and products effective throughout the plant lifecycle, customers need to periodically check their effectiveness and take prompt action if any problem is identified.

Global market pressures are causing businesses world wide to strive to lower manufacturing costs and to become more agile companies in order to quickly respond to changes in market demands and to fend off competitive threats. Yokogawa's customers in all industries and markets are responding to this pressure by working to more closely integrate their plant manufacturing systems with their enterprise wide business systems in a seamless manner.

In Japanese industries which grew rapidly until the early 1990's, solid production techniques for creating high-quality products supported the development of manufacturing industries. However, the economic environment has been changing rapidly and tough global competition has become unavoidable. Particularly, the manufacturing industry must adapt not only to changes in economic environments but also to changes in social conditions such as emphasis on health, safety, and environment (so called HSE).

Recently, standardization of procedural automation of manual operations has been promoted mainly by the International Society of Automation (ISA), and the functional requirements necessary for automation are being studied by the ISA106 committee in the US.

For a coal fired power generation plant (hereafter referred to as "BTG facilities," in which "BTG" stands for boiler, steam turbine, and generator) supplying power to a large-scale production plant, the CO₂ emissions from such facilities are a critical issue today.

Environment and safety are major topics on a global scale in recent times. As symbolized by the effectuation of the Kyoto Protocol, an interest in preserving the environment is growing worldwide, and there is also a tendency to criticize more severely, occurrences of industrial accidents that are accompanied by environmental contamination or which may cause damage, etc., to residents in the surrounding areas.

In recent years, expectations for control systems using wireless communications have been increasing in the process control market. This is because these systems do not require power and communication wiring for field instruments, enabling reduced initial and maintenance costs, and easy installation.

Yokogawa has been leading the process automation industries as one of the pioneers in field digital technologies represented by the FOUNDATION fieldbus™ and Field Device Tool/Device Type Manager (FDT/DTM).

Due to emerging competitors from the rapidly growing countries such as India and China and the global economic downturn triggered by the Lehman shock, many companies in the process industries are struggling to survive the severe global competition.

The operation and monitoring functions of a plant control system are important means of understanding the condition of the plant and how it operates. Traditionally, user needs for the system focused on such features as increased operability and durability. As a result, these functions were developed for a dedicated machine in the form of dedicated human-machine interface software.

The introduction of wireless into industrial monitoring and control not only reduces wiring and maintenance costs but also expands its applications to include those which are impossible with wired systems, such as monitoring points which have to be given up due to the difficulty of the construction, and monitoring of points on rotating or frequently moved objects.

The Yokogawa business vision states that the company endeavors to achieve Net-zero emissions, ensure the Well-being of all, and make a transition to a Circular Economy by 2050. 

Open up control. Open Process Automation (OPA) opens the door to expanded choices, leverage, and customization.

Create a scalable, sustainable architecture. Remove the restraints of proprietary systems. OPA enables you to leverage all available technologies to open up solutions. Explore the possibilities today.

YOKOGAWA will contribute to technology evolution particularly in measurement and analytical tools to help build a world where researchers will increasingly focus on insightful interpretation of data, and advancing Life Science to benefit humanity.