Unlocking data for smarter chemical plant operations

SURFACING ACTIONABLE insights from process and diagnostic data collected from instrumentation and control systems is critical to more efficient, safe and sustainable operations for today’s chemical plant owners. However the complexity of achieving true end-to-end integration in chemical plant applications is magnified by different technical standards and communication protocols that hamper efforts to collect and process data quickly, effectively and at low cost.

Consequently, much of the valuable data that has potential to help optimise plant operations has tended to remain locked away within hundreds or thousands of sensors, controllers and other sub-systems.

With the development of technologies including cloud, edge computing and data networking, this challenge is being increasingly addressed, opening new opportunities to fully realise the benefits of end-to-end instrumentation integration.  

Unlocking the power of industrial data

Recent ICT industry trends - including edge computing and cloud - have opened up fresh approaches to the collection, storage, processing and exchange of process control and automation data. 

With its approach to decoupling process control from other plant functions such as asset optimisation, the NAMUR Open Architecture (NOA) has paved the way for disparate devices to connect successfully to a unified network, regardless of their geographical location. This ‘flat’ client/server model represents a radical departure from the conventional top-down automation pyramid, where control system commands cascade down to connected devices. In a NOA environment the role of the server is played by the device, with the control system acting as client.

By enabling real-time access to a wealth of data that extends far beyond simple measured values to embrace diagnostics, calibration schedules and other derived information, the NOA approach provides dramatically improved visibility of instrumentation and diagnostic data. This allows processes to function at optimum efficiency and gives staff the ability to identify and address potential issues before they impact on continuity and safety. As a valuable added benefit, the ready availability of data for can also assists in satisfying the reporting and compliance requirements imposed on chemical operators by increasingly stringent safety and environmental legislation.

Tackling communication barriers

As the ‘common language’ for data exchange between devices and controllers, communication protocols play an essential role in enabling the seamless integration of process instrumentation. Sitting beneath these higher abstraction layers that govern signalling and communications is the protocol-agnostic physical layer – the ubiquitous transport role that’s been played in the ICT world for decades by Ethernet.

With its greater speed and flexibility, Ethernet gives instrumentation and process control vendors greater freedom in their selection of real-time communications protocol. The preeminent choice for this task in industrial environments is PROFINET, which simplifies interfacing and data retrieval from devices by utilizing an application profile defining standardized data parameters for different devices. 

Offering compatibility with network-centric architectures and Ethernet-based communications, OPC UA is rapidly gaining favour as a versatile open source standard for transporting data between field devices and cloud-hosted applications. Offering a friendly user interface and eliminating the requirement for time-consuming device-specific programming, OPC UA also addresses security concerns by incorporating measures like user authentication and security certificates to thwart unauthorised intrusions.

Security front and center

The exponentially increasing number of connected devices in today’s IoT world magnifies the dangers of unauthorized access to corporate and industrial networks. The large numbers of field devices at a typical site also brings the potential for inadvertent connections, making robust user authentication and instrument identification processes essential to mitigate the risks of costly damage to equipment, compromised operations or potentially catastrophic security vulnerabilities.

Alongside easy-to-implement user authentication and identification measures, secure provisioning of a seamlessly integrated instrumentation system can strengthen integral trust and security, with devices validating attempts at access by authorized clients, and clients themselves verifying that they are communicating with the intended devices. 

Reducing cost and complexity through standardization

Security and complexity have been traditional barriers to achieving seamless integration of instrumentation systems in the chemical process industry. Traditionally, dependence on a patchwork of communication protocols between different levels of the conventional automation ‘pyramid’ incurred significant overheads in converting and translating between different data types and structures. Today, vendor-led initiatives such as the Field Device Integration (FDI) standard are lowering the barriers to translating data between devices by reducing system complexity, deployment and maintenance costs.

High speed data plus power

Ethernet is fast emerging as a transformative enabler for the efficient collection and exchange of real-time industrial data. In particular, the recent standardization of Ethernet APL (Advanced Physical Layer) enhances the technology’s appeal as the physical networking layer in challenging control and automation environments. Carrying high-speed data plus power over a familiar twisted-pair cable, Ethernet APL brings other benefits relevant to the process industry including operation over long cable runs up to 1,000m and intrinsic safety for use in flammable atmospheres.

Driving efficiency and safety

The long-held objective of seamlessly integrated instrumentation systems is being steadily realised through technological advances that are helping chemical companies optimise plant performance, ensure safety and support regulatory compliance through the efficient collection, exchange and curation of production data. 

Through innovation and dialogue between stakeholders including equipment vendors, standardisation bodies and end-users, longstanding areas of concern such as cybersecurity and the management of system complexity are also being steadily addressed. 

As such, the vision of truly end-to-end instrumentation integration is growing steadily closer, opening the way for safer, more efficient and more profitable operations for chemical plant owners and operators, both today and into the future.

For more information: 

www.abb.com/measurement

Tel:  +44 1925 741 111