Listen in: New Experion upgrade includes embedded batch, simulation capabilities

-- Control Engineering, 7/2/2008

Honeywell Process Solutions (HPS) has released an enhanced version of its Experion Process Knowledge System (PKS) that allows plant operators to coordinate process control, safety shutdown, and fire and gas mitigation steps. (Click to hear comments from Jean-Marie Alliet, HPS EMEA marketing. Give the file a moment to load after clicking.)

In addition to the unique safety instrumented system (SIS) integration, the company says Experion helps improve plant operations through embedded simulation capabilities used for operator training and control, display and procedure validation. The system also introduces new integrated batch functionality that can significantly increase production as well as reliability for chemical and life sciences companies.

Experion is Honeywell’s main process automation and control system platform, positioned to provide operators greater insight into plant operations. The system feeds data from critical plant subsystems directly to operators to help improve decision making in the control room.

“Experion was originally designed to streamline overall operations, and this latest version expands upon that principle by eliminating the need for intermediate devices to relay important information to the nerve center of the plant,” said Harsh Chitale, vice president of strategy and global marketing for HPS. “This release is the most efficient system of its kind, and that efficiency translates to safer, more reliable and more profitable plants.”

The update includes four major functional upgrades:

Integration with the company’s newest Safety Manager platform, to provide crucial safety and fire and gas information, such as pre-shutdown alerts, directly to operators using a common display. This reportedly allows the system to provide operators with plant-wide SIS point data, diagnostics and system information, as well as alarms and events, operator displays and sequence-of-event information. It also reduces overall system and maintenance costs by reducing the amount of installed field sensor equipment.

Embedded functionality of Experion Batch Manager, designed to allow chemical and life sciences customers to execute batches at the control level, versus using a separate server. The company claims this makes the system more reliable, less complex and easier to maintain.

Embedded integration capability with Honeywell’s UniSim simulation tool to train operators on processes before they are implemented in a plant. This approach aims at helping prepare operators for normal and abnormal operations and improves plant reliability by reducing operator errors. Moreover, simulation provides means to test control strategies, displays, and procedures before applying them on live processes.

Alarm shelving utility that allows operators to manage and prioritize alarms on their displays.  This interesting capability is based on several years of collaboration between Honeywell and the Abnormal Situation Management consortium intends to improve operator effectiveness during abnormal situations.

HPS provides an interface with third-party subsystems using Modbus TCP to control devices such as remote terminal units, terminal servers, analyzers and scales.

—Edited by Peter Welander, process industries editor, peter.welander@reedbusiness.com,
Process & Advanced Control Monthly
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