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Will wireless ever go critical?
Will wireless ever go critical?
March 30, 2007
Today I turned in the material for the next Process and Advanced Control Monthly which will go out via e-mail on April 4. At the risk of spoiling the surprise of one of the articles, I have been thinking about wireless systems and what it will take for them to be used for critical control applications. I'm not trying to promote the idea, just considering the possibility. I suspect there are people who have had similar thoughts over the last decade or more (and still today) about fieldbus technology. While I wasn't paying attention in 1997, there must have been debates as to whether fieldbus architecture was trustworthy enough to keep a plant from going boom.
The thought drew me to a comment made by John Rezabek from ISP Chemicals in a podcast interview (which was also mentioned in yesterday's post). He told a story about a case where a maintenance guy inadvertantly disconnected a critical sensor from an operating pump rather than the standby unit. Had that sensor been hard wired, the DCS would have interpreted the disconnection as a zero reading, shut down the pump and thrown the process into an upset. Fortunately, John says the fieldbus system recognized the disconnection simply as a loss of signal. The DCS tripped an appropriate alarm, but the pump continued to operate and no upset happened. This story illustrates a situation where fieldbus wiring was better than hard wiring. The question is, will wireless networking ever offer an advantage like that? Anybody got any ideas on that?Posted by Peter Welander on March 30, 2007 | Comments (0)
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