Pillar to Post: Peter Welander's Blog
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Training and operator effectiveness
April 06, 2010
Recently I received an email from Tom Williams who is now program manager, operator effectiveness for Honeywell Process Solutions. Tom used to be with the Specialty Materials division and was responsible for many of the process improvements made to the (formerly Allied Signal) plant in Geismar, LA. (Listen to an earlier podcast with Tom discussing that... » more
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April 06, 2010
Recently I received an email from Tom Williams who is now program manager, operator effectiveness for Honeywell Process Solutions. Tom used to be with the Specialty Materials division and was responsible for many of the process improvements made to the (formerly Allied Signal) plant in Geismar, LA. (Listen to an earlier podcast with Tom discussing that... » more
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Backward compatibility vs. future proofing
March 31, 2010
We posted a news story earlier today containing some suggestions from Emerson Process Management on the topic of how WirelessHART and ISA100 can converge. While it may be an oversimplification, the gist of the matter seems to be that Emerson is suggesting that WiHART should become the working device-level protocol for ISA100. Adopt WiHART and be done with... » more
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March 31, 2010
We posted a news story earlier today containing some suggestions from Emerson Process Management on the topic of how WirelessHART and ISA100 can converge. While it may be an oversimplification, the gist of the matter seems to be that Emerson is suggesting that WiHART should become the working device-level protocol for ISA100. Adopt WiHART and be done with... » more
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Optimizing oil refining
March 23, 2010
A press release crossed my desk yesterday, and it connected two things that have been recent discussion points. The main topic of the release is that ExxonMobil Research and Engineering Company (EMRE) has signed a licensing agreement with Invensys to use some of the refinery process models that EMRE has developed. The suite of models will be available to... » more
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March 23, 2010
A press release crossed my desk yesterday, and it connected two things that have been recent discussion points. The main topic of the release is that ExxonMobil Research and Engineering Company (EMRE) has signed a licensing agreement with Invensys to use some of the refinery process models that EMRE has developed. The suite of models will be available to... » more
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Engineers and marital infidelity
March 16, 2010
My colleague Renee sent me a link to an interesting blog yesterday with a posting that had a very thought-provoking tidbit of information. It seems that there is a Website called AshleyMadison.com, (I cannot reach it from my desk because the RBI censors have blocked it for “adult content.”) which purports to be a dating site for people that want to cheat on... » more
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March 16, 2010
My colleague Renee sent me a link to an interesting blog yesterday with a posting that had a very thought-provoking tidbit of information. It seems that there is a Website called AshleyMadison.com, (I cannot reach it from my desk because the RBI censors have blocked it for “adult content.”) which purports to be a dating site for people that want to cheat on... » more
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Oil refining passes peak
March 14, 2010
A few weeks ago I posted a question asking if oil consumption in the U.S. hit its peak in 2007 and will not reach those levels again even after the recession ends. There is more evidence that consumption has indeed peaked because oil companies are now looking at ways to reduce refining capacity. If you can remember back as far as 2006, there was much hand... » more
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March 14, 2010
A few weeks ago I posted a question asking if oil consumption in the U.S. hit its peak in 2007 and will not reach those levels again even after the recession ends. There is more evidence that consumption has indeed peaked because oil companies are now looking at ways to reduce refining capacity. If you can remember back as far as 2006, there was much hand... » more
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Testing Toyota
March 10, 2010
I have been following some of the discussions related to Toyotas lately. (In the interests of full disclosure, my wife drives a 2008 Prius and my daughter drives a 2008 Matrix. My wife is out of town at the moment, so I drove the Prius to work this morning. I did give a quick inspection to the floor mat and all seemed fine. I’ve driven it enough to think... » more
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March 10, 2010
I have been following some of the discussions related to Toyotas lately. (In the interests of full disclosure, my wife drives a 2008 Prius and my daughter drives a 2008 Matrix. My wife is out of town at the moment, so I drove the Prius to work this morning. I did give a quick inspection to the floor mat and all seemed fine. I’ve driven it enough to think... » more
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More on wireless interoperability
March 02, 2010
One of the comparisons I’ve been hearing about ISA100 is that it’s similar to adoption of 4-20 mA as a communication platform. While 4-20 mA has never completely eclipsed all other analog protocols, it certainly is dominant. Back when it was made into a standard, various companies began to look at what they could do to expand on it. There were several... » more
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March 02, 2010
One of the comparisons I’ve been hearing about ISA100 is that it’s similar to adoption of 4-20 mA as a communication platform. While 4-20 mA has never completely eclipsed all other analog protocols, it certainly is dominant. Back when it was made into a standard, various companies began to look at what they could do to expand on it. There were several... » more
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Wireless interoperability? What is that?
February 18, 2010
Last week I was at the ARC Advisory Group conference in Orlando. While my wife was home shoveling snow, I was trying to get a grasp on some of the issues related to wireless field device networks. (For the record, the weather in Florida was pretty crummy.) One term that keeps coming up is interoperability. At the moment, the two main contenders for the... » more
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February 18, 2010
Last week I was at the ARC Advisory Group conference in Orlando. While my wife was home shoveling snow, I was trying to get a grasp on some of the issues related to wireless field device networks. (For the record, the weather in Florida was pretty crummy.) One term that keeps coming up is interoperability. At the moment, the two main contenders for the... » more
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PID trials and errors
February 12, 2010
After working on the story Understanding Derivative in PID Control with Vance VanDoren, I was interested in some extensive comments from Larry Trammell, a software engineer in Bellevue, WA. He apparently took issue with one of Vance’s comments in the article sidebar about early work on PID control development. He said, in part, “Ziegler and Nichols did not... » more
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February 12, 2010
After working on the story Understanding Derivative in PID Control with Vance VanDoren, I was interested in some extensive comments from Larry Trammell, a software engineer in Bellevue, WA. He apparently took issue with one of Vance’s comments in the article sidebar about early work on PID control development. He said, in part, “Ziegler and Nichols did not... » more
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Has gasoline consumption peaked?
February 03, 2010
We know that gasoline consumption has gone down lately due to recessionary pressures, but now some experts believe it will never return to the heady days of 2007. We may look back at that time as the year gasoline consumption peaked in the U.S. An article from McClatchy news service suggests three reasons: • New vehicles are more fuel efficient;• The... » more
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February 03, 2010
We know that gasoline consumption has gone down lately due to recessionary pressures, but now some experts believe it will never return to the heady days of 2007. We may look back at that time as the year gasoline consumption peaked in the U.S. An article from McClatchy news service suggests three reasons: • New vehicles are more fuel efficient;• The... » more
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Know your alternative gasses
January 28, 2010
In my discussion of home producer gas appliances, Kevin Chisholm pointed out that I had misused some terminology in the interest of trying to add variety to my prose. (Such is a hazard in this business, and I have been called on it a few times before.) In the headline I used the term bio-gas to refer to the product from the wood gasification process. While... » more
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January 28, 2010
In my discussion of home producer gas appliances, Kevin Chisholm pointed out that I had misused some terminology in the interest of trying to add variety to my prose. (Such is a hazard in this business, and I have been called on it a few times before.) In the headline I used the term bio-gas to refer to the product from the wood gasification process. While... » more
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Your next home appliance: bio-gas generator
January 26, 2010
Last Sunday, Joe gave me the results of some searching he’d done on the Internet about wood gas generators. (We discuss this topic frequently, and I keep telling him that I can’t believe he’s never dabbled in it given all his other interests.) Anyhow, apparently there’s a company in China that manufactures a commercially built wood gas generator with the... » more
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January 26, 2010
Last Sunday, Joe gave me the results of some searching he’d done on the Internet about wood gas generators. (We discuss this topic frequently, and I keep telling him that I can’t believe he’s never dabbled in it given all his other interests.) Anyhow, apparently there’s a company in China that manufactures a commercially built wood gas generator with the... » more
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Hazards of repeating gray science
January 20, 2010
The United Nations has suffered some embarrassment over a report issued by the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The benchmark report, issued in 2007 under the leadership of Rajendra Pachauri, made the rather alarming claim that the Earth’s glaciers are melting so quickly that they will disappear completely in the Himalayas as early as... » more
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January 20, 2010
The United Nations has suffered some embarrassment over a report issued by the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The benchmark report, issued in 2007 under the leadership of Rajendra Pachauri, made the rather alarming claim that the Earth’s glaciers are melting so quickly that they will disappear completely in the Himalayas as early as... » more
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Rising sugar prices: Food vs. fuel?
January 19, 2010
If you think your mid-afternoon sugar boost is getting more expensive, you’re probably right. Sugar costs have been rising for a while and are getting to levels not seen an almost 30 years. Needless to say, this affects products like candy immediately and directly. Confectionary prices are up almost 10% over this time last year. Raw sugar on world markets... » more
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January 19, 2010
If you think your mid-afternoon sugar boost is getting more expensive, you’re probably right. Sugar costs have been rising for a while and are getting to levels not seen an almost 30 years. Needless to say, this affects products like candy immediately and directly. Confectionary prices are up almost 10% over this time last year. Raw sugar on world markets... » more
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Want a nuke plant? Call Korea
January 10, 2010
You’ll be forgiven if you don’t know that KEPCO (Korean Electric Power Company) is the world’s third largest nuclear plant builder, but the name is likely to become far more recognizable in years to come. KEPCO just beat its two main competitors (GE/Hitachi and Areva) to get a $20 billion contract related to four new Generation-3 APR-1400 reactors in the... » more
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January 10, 2010
You’ll be forgiven if you don’t know that KEPCO (Korean Electric Power Company) is the world’s third largest nuclear plant builder, but the name is likely to become far more recognizable in years to come. KEPCO just beat its two main competitors (GE/Hitachi and Areva) to get a $20 billion contract related to four new Generation-3 APR-1400 reactors in the... » more
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Coal troubles: As if carbon isn't bad enough
January 04, 2010
In what is a real-life example of “pick your poison,” coal-burning power plants are dealing with a choice of spewing out sulfur dioxide that results in acid rain, or mercury that contaminates fish and causes birth defects. We won’t even get onto the topic of carbon emissions. This is manifest in rising levels of mercury in a number of mid-western states,... » more
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January 04, 2010
In what is a real-life example of “pick your poison,” coal-burning power plants are dealing with a choice of spewing out sulfur dioxide that results in acid rain, or mercury that contaminates fish and causes birth defects. We won’t even get onto the topic of carbon emissions. This is manifest in rising levels of mercury in a number of mid-western states,... » more
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