Clean water and green energy technology from Global Water Engineering (GWE) has been used by Chokyuenyong Industrial in Thailand to cut effluent COD pollution levels at its cassava production plant by more than 95%.

Energy harvesting is the process by which energy (ambient, motion, wind, light), derived from external sources, is captured and stored to supply power for low-energy electronics. Ambient energy is available in abundance in the process industry and it is here that energy harvesting is beginning to make its mark.

Graham Moss from the IICA discusses the problems of knowledge drain in the instrumentation and automation profession and how training can help.

In most process industries, the management of energy consumption has become a high priority in recent years. But standalone and ad hoc efforts to manage energy will not achieve the results that can be achieved when a comprehensive life cycle approach is used.

Nyrstar was looking for cost-effective methods of preserving its existing hardware and programming investment while extending component life and improving the manufacturing process.

Recent security incidents such as the Stuxnet worm that attacked Siemens WinCC and PCS7 systems in Iran and the remote sabotage of a Texas power utility are a wake-up call for the industrial automation industry. We continue our article from last month with a more in-depth look at the concept of ‘defence in depth’.

Feed Energy, based in Sioux City, Iowa, has been the premier supplier of high-quality liquid feed solutions for livestock and poultry for nearly 25 years. The company specialises in premium vegetable oil production.

Designing with magnetostrictive sensors opens many options. Engineers are increasingly finding that magnetostrictive linear position sensors can replace their linear encoders in applications while improving productivity and reducing cost of ownership.

Proportional-integral-derivative (PID) controllers are ubiquitous. Designing and tuning them may appear simple in theory, but it can be difficult and time consuming in practice. Using model-based design, the development process can be improved by systematically designing, testing and implementing PID controllers on programmable logic controllers (PLCs), programmable automation controllers (PACs) and microprocessors.

For the past decade, industrial control systems administrators and engineers wanted to believe that ‘air gaps’ truly existed between their systems and the rest of the world. They have also hoped that ‘security by obscurity’ would keep them safe from security threats. Those days are over...

There are several well-known - but probably misunderstood - facts about compressed air usage and systems throughout Australian industry. A consequence of this is that your compressed air system is an ideal place to start when looking into energy-efficiency opportunities.

Permanent magnet synchronous torque motors offer significant advantages on high energy consuming and high dynamic applications.

Industrial ethernet impacts every aspect of the operation. Building a strong industrial ethernet system and harnessing the power of its wireless component can reap unanticipated benefits for the entire facility.

Integra Coal’s coal preparation plant, serving Camberwell and Glennies Creek coal mines in the Hunter Valley, uses an array of pneumatically actuated knife-gate valves to control coal flow to the preparation area. The company found that the two traditional methods of pneumatic actuation previously used in the plant were ineffective and inefficient.

Wireless mesh networks are designed to provide high bandwidth communications channels between wireless sensing nodes over a specific coverage area.