Engineers and scientists around the world are looking for ways to harness the sun’s thermal energy to replace the diminishing global supplies of fossil fuel with a ‘clean’, carbon-neutral energy source. Australia is particularly well placed to do this, since it has the highest average amount of solar radiation per square metre per year on Earth.

The maintenance manager of any facility has as first priority the efficient and reliable operation of the organisation. But sometimes the individual employee assigned to a maintenance activity may not be equal to the task at hand.

The Shell oil refinery at Clyde — nestled among the mangroves on the banks of the Parramatta River — is a well-known Sydney landmark. With encroaching suburbia and the surrounding fragile ecology of the Parramatta River on its doorstep, there is a need to maintain high safety and environmental standards. With the safety systems at Clyde due for an upgrade, Shell wanted to maximise the safety and operational requirements of the plant.

Design, Operate, Maintain (DOM), the term coined by industry analysts ARC Advisory Group, gives us a vocabulary to talk about some of the key concepts in asset management and in industrial maintenance, repair and operation. Industrial facility designers and those that operate and maintain those facilities need to work together closely if plant efficiency and business profitability are to improve over time.

The Shell oil refinery at Clyde — nestled among the mangroves on the banks of the Parramatta River — is a well-known Sydney landmark. With encroaching suburbia and the surrounding fragile ecology of the Parramatta River on its doorstep, there is a need to maintain high safety and environmental standards. With the safety systems at Clyde due for an upgrade, Shell wanted to maximise the safety and operational requirements of the plant.

Irrespective of whether you are a professional service provider, a manufacturer, an educator or a retailer, technology-based equipment plays a significant role in your ability to produce and supply services or goods to your customer. It logically follows, therefore, that failure of technology, plant or equipment in your business will impact upon your ability to supply — either in absolute terms, or by impacting on quality — with a consequent increase in costs to your business, erosion of profitability and loss of credibility with your customer.

Modern process instruments incorporate a fair degree of intelligence used to optimise process variable accuracy and reliability, and can even undertake predictive maintenance. But they fail miserably in two critical aspects even when compared with technologies we use every day — self-adjustment and self-healing.

Discrete sensors and vision tend to be at polar opposites in complexity and capability. But sensor suppliers are now providing more sophisticated sensors and application techniques advancing up the curve towards vision solutions, and vision providers are trying to expand down the curve towards the discrete sensor world. But instead of a crash of technologies, a new layer of technology is evolving that combines the best from each.

With conventional pipeline leak detection methods there is a gap between what you believe is occurring along your pipeline and what is actually happening. This information gap can result in a delay in you discovering and locating leaks.

Explosion prevention is a hot issue within the field of systems engineering. Friction, overheating or sparks could lead to disaster in potentially explosive environments. Brake motors are essential in stopping loads in case of power failure or danger of injury, but the solutions for hazardous (explosion risk) areas are very limited and expensive.

Australian and international safety standards permit users to apply a ‘proven in prior use’ methodology to justify their safety integrity level (SIL)-rated safety instrumented system (SIS) equipment. But, before you choose that option, be sure you can accept the responsibility and you have the proper tools and procedures.

In this article, Ron Bell of the IEC explains functional safety and looks ahead to the revision of the IEC 61508 standard that is due for publication in 2010.

Intertec is supplying over 100 fire protection cabinets to support Emerson Process Management’s instrumentation solution for the new hydrocracker complex at the Kirishi oil refinery near St Petersburg, Russia. The cabinets will provide the valve actuators with a minimum of 30 minutes of protection against fire, so that the plant’s emergency shutdown systems and services can quickly isolate and minimise damage to protect employees, assets and environment.

Hayes International specialises in the design and manufacture of roll forming machinery for the production of roofing and wall cladding profiles, structural sections, long length power folding machines and a wide range of associated metalworking equipment. Hayes has developed a worldwide reputation for proven performance and high-quality machinery built in its modern facilities in Rotorua, New Zealand and Queensland, Australia.

In the complex and demanding environment that most SCADA system users operate in, real insight comes from asking and answering the right questions.