Transcript
The road knows no end. That’s what we’ve been doing at Control for the past, oh, about 6-7 weeks now. Our editors have been traveling to several conferences, user groups, you name it and we’re here to give you the lowdown on what we found it.
Welcome back to Control Amplified, where we talk about all things process control, I’m Len Vermillion, editor in chief of Control magazine and Control Global.com, and today we’re going to fill you in on two more industry events we attended recently. This time courtesy of Executive Editor Jim Montagues reporting from the heart of Texas to post-Olympics Paris.
First though, I want to remind you that you can always listen to our podcasts and get additional reporting on our website any time you’d like. That includes our last episode when I outlined the 5 key takeaways from Yokogawa’s YNOW users conference in Houston.
And for this episode let’s start right back in East Texas where Jim covered the Safety and Risk Conference at the Mary Kay O’Connor Process Safety Center at Texas A&M University in College Station. The event attracted close to 400 attendees and 30 exhibitors and was co-located with the 79th annual Instrumentation and Automation Symposium and the first Ocean Energy Safety Day.
By all accounts it was a great event, very technical, which we like, right, and the first takeaways was a look at using calorimetry to understand reactive chemical hazards. Steve Horsch, technical leader at Dow’s Reactive Chemicals Group, presented on this subject and said most users are aware they need to know reactions and rates to avoid containment losses when manufacturing chemicals, but few know about more subtle measurement nuances that can alter those reactions and rates.
For example, a simple equation can express measuring heat from accelerating rate calorimetry (ARC), but more complex calculations are needed to demonstrate constant-volume heat capacity. “Likewise, if a user needs to know how much energy is coming from the heat of a reaction, the real-world process may be producing 315 joules per gram (j/g), while the ARC only shows 240-260 j/g, which means the resulting time requirements will be off,” Horsch explained.
He went on to say, “This is why it’s crucial to examine what’s providing data, where it’s coming from, and whether it matches your actual scenario. Reaction kinetics from an ARC can be corrected using Fisher’s equation, but there may also be more complex reaction kinetics due to external heat pooling, which is a big-deal nuance. It’s not easy to collect the right data, but if you don’t have it, then you won’t get the right result. ARC can provide a lot of information to determine safe operating limits, but its limits must also be understood.”
In another presentation, “Learnings and improvements in process safety,” Bridget Todd, VP of enterprise health, safety and environment (HSE) at Baker Hughes, reported that its Enterprise Risk Avoidance program includes KPIs that can be tracked quarterly, reported back to managers, and contribute to high-level HSE audits. To reach managers and get them to follow up on these practices, the risk avoidance program also requires competence evaluations to make sure participants are doing their jobs capably and safely.
For instance, Todd explained that one Baker Hughes client is an artificial lift team that was experiencing some communications and management problems, and found it had gaps in documenting its pump performance and pressure parameters. It subsequently engaged more closely with its front-line staff on risks and mitigations and reminded all players why checking and documentation is important.
“Open, common metrics showed leading and lagging indicators, but it also demonstrated training compliance and engagement levels,” Todd concluded. “This enabled tighter governance of all their process safety tasks.”
Jim made another interesting trip to Paris, France, in October to cover Aveva World 2024, which was reported to be the largest event in its history—all focused on overcoming barriers to using industrial software and digitalization to bring real results and value to the physical world.
“We can’t share data among applications and users by continuing to work in silos. That era has to be over, especially in the world of industrial software,” said Caspar Herzberg, CEO at Aveva, which is now wholly owned by Schneider Electric.
Herzberg continued by saying, “The two big changes lately are the scale and nature of changes occurring, such as climate change. Most people don’t understand how bad it’s gotten, but the solution is humanity collaborating across borders and industries.”
As examples, Norway-based Elkem operates 15 plants and 19 control centers to produce its silicon-based products. Over the years it's adopted several Aveva software packages, such as Unified Operations Center (UOC) for aggregating and displaying processes on the plant-floor.
This unified platform is likely to combine technologies from Aveva, Schneider Electric and Databricks, which are planning to release a joint solution in January 2025. In fact, Herzberg’s opening-day keynote was punctuated by an onstage discussion with Jean-Pascal Tricoire, chairman of Schneider Electric, and Mattei Zaharia, professor at University of California Berkley and CTO of Databricks, which supplies an AI-enabled, data-intelligence platform.
“The two big items that come up with customers lately are digitalization and decarbonization, but these efforts require partnerships to get their data right,” said Tricoire. “Digitalization is constantly shifting the human role, not to mention the way we live, so how can the C-level convince users that adopting it will let them to do what they couldn’t do before?”
Zaharia added, “AI makes massive-scale, deep-learning possible, which can generate better-quality data, results and decisions. We’re excited to see how the new Aveva Connect unified, cloud-based industrial intelligence platform will take on challenges like sustainability.”
Rob McGreevy, chief product officer at Aveva, reported that multiple early-adopters are already using the Connect platform and AI to optimize their processes.
That’s our report from these events, if you were at either, we’d love to hear your thoughts. As always, you can drop me an email or talk to me on LinkedIn.
In our next episode we’re going to take a look at the key takeaways from Rockwell Automation’s Automation Fair in Anaheim, so I hope you can join us for that in two weeks.
For now, happy Thanksgiving if you’re listening in the U.S. and we’ll talk to you again soon.
