Fieldbus needs skills to grow

Activity levels on systems involving FOUNDATION fieldbus and PROFIBUS techniques has increased significantly for contractors and systems builders recently. At the Fieldbus Foundation 2008 General Assembly in Antwerp, presentations from Bechtel and Jacobs detailed a growing involvement with fieldbus on world-scale projects.

In seven recent projects Bechtel has worked with five different host vendors, completing over 10,000 Foundation fieldbus segments, and Richard Mills, a Bechtel control systems supervising engineer, based in London, said that fieldbus is now the routine requirement - on some jobs mandatory, on others the customer quotes "Fieldbus should be considered". The end-users are now looking to the contractors to provide the fieldbus expertise and knowledge.

The Fieldbus Foundation UK Committee followed up this interest from contractors with a recent seminar at the Madejski conference centre in Reading. While the presentations were aimed at project managers and engineers in the EPCs, the objective was stated to be to show what users can gain from fieldbus systems.

At the Reading event, Travis Hesketh, Emerson Process Europe, stressed that while major CAPEX benefits could be realised by offshore installations - taking advantage of the smaller system footprint and the lower system weight, from reduced cabling and cabinets - the real user benefits were being sought in better OPEX performance. FOUNDATION fieldbus, he said, delivers meaningful intelligence information to operations and maintenance in time for them to react effectively.

The audience of around 60 - of which 70% had not worked on a fieldbus project - saw demonstrations of alarms presented to operators that used the built-in extra intelligence of the sensors and valves. Examples included a dual-sensor temperature transmitter indicating that one probe had failed, but that continued to provide valid measurement signals from the second probe; and a pH transmitter that signals a maintenance requirement developing - for example if the sensor glass needs cleaning. More interesting perhaps were the system monitoring tools that could identify control loops with high variability, and list out all the loops where control had been switched to manual.

At the Fieldbus Foundation general assembly, Paul Young, automation improvement manager at INEOS ChlorVinyls, presented the background to the company's major "Genesis" project at Runcorn, which replaced the cellrooms that produce caustic soda (1,200 ktpa) and chlorine by the electrolysis of brine.

In parallel with the reported Bechtel project experience, Young stressed the need for training of all site personnel at all stages of the project installation, noting that the major hassle in the commissioning at Runcorn came from inexperienced installation technicians. And now, in a role where he is charged with achieving £500,000pa in OPEX savings via the fieldbus installation, further operator, engineer and technician training is seen as essential.

The UK PROFIBUS Committee also presented a seminar, called the "Practical Aspects of PROFIBUS PA in the Process Industries", to another audience of engineers last month, at Murrayfield in Edinburgh.

Seminar delegates heard Mark Cargill, of water industry contractor EnPure, stress the need for all installation contractors and technicians to have been properly trained in working with fieldbus technology, in order to avoid the site cabling errors that otherwise result.

The growth of PROFIBUS projects in the water industry has escalated training demands at the PI Competence Centre, based at Manchester Metropolitan University (MMU), which has been providing courses for PROFIBUS installers, engineers and technicians since 1997.

The most popular training is for PROFIBUS installers, and MMU will shortly achieve the milestone of the 100th of these courses, which will be a major feature at the annual PROFIBUS and PROFINET User Conference in June this year. PI will bring their worldwide experts and demonstration equipment to a two-day seminar in Stratford-on-Avon to hear further presentations on user experience with the technology.

UK chemicals manufacturers are meeting their fieldbus technology training needs by using the facilities at the CATCH (Centre for the Assessment of Technical Competence) training centre for the industry in Stallingborough, near Grimsby, North Lincolnshire.

The £8.2-million facility provides a live training system, using an Emerson DeltaV with FOUNDATION fieldbus communications, and can be operated as a continuous process or configured for batch production using the reactor vessel.

In order to create an authentic working environment, the process on site is based on a real digital automation architecture. FOUNDATION fieldbus digital communication technologies feed data over a network to the centralised control room where students are able to control, configure and troubleshoot in a real plant environment.

CATCH is operated through a management team by an alliance of 40 chemical companies and contractors operating in the region. Over 6,000 students having passed through the facility in the first year of operation and around 120 apprentices are currently based at the centre.


Market shares clash

In February, the Fieldbus Foundation general assembly claimed a 68% market share for FOUNDATION Fieldbus in the market for intelligent networks in the process industries, against a PROFIBUS share of 27%. These figures came from an ARC report, dated 2007 - with all figures based on estimates of fieldbus 'revenues', ie sales contract values, over an unspecified period.

The claimed installed base for FF nodes, in terms of numbers of units, was quoted as approaching one million in February.

The PROFIBUS organisation, however, is challenging this picture of FF dominance. In April, it declared independently-determined figures putting the PROFIBUS PA installed base at the end of 2007 at around 750,000 - up from 630,000 the previous year.

This would put the relative market shares of the two networks, based on nodes installed, at FF 57% and PROFIBUS 43%.