Testing times
The power of sensing systems today is to be found less in the range of techniques, technologies and hardware designs, and more in their on-board software. Brian Tinham reports
Mass production
Coriolis mass flowmeters have been improving in sophistication and reducing in cost for at least 25 years, but now the race is on for multi-phase metering. Brian Tinham reports
Liquid assets
Water and waste treatment plants are among the oldest around anywhere, but don't imagine they're bereft of developments. Brian Tinham reports
Coriolis flowmeters help GF reduce filling times and improve accuracy
GF is reporting reduced filling times, improved accuracy and repeatability and tighter filling tolerances on its filling machines since installing the latest Micro Motion FMT filling mass transmitter, from Emerson Process Management.
All fired up
Fortum O&M (UK) operates and maintains the Grangemouth combined heat and power plant (CHP), which supplies power and steam to BP's Grangemouth complex, Scotland's largest industrial site and one of the biggest, most integrated oil and gas complexes in the world. Fortum supplies the site with 230t of superheated steam every hour, generated by the CHP plant. The plant is a combined cycle, with a Siemens V94.2 gas turbine and a waste heat boiler that generates 140MW of electricity and 230t per hour of superheated steam, and a standalone Foster Wheeler boiler (B8) which is also able to supply 230t of superheated steam per hour. The B8 is normally run on low load to provide headroom for the case of the CHP trip and it is very important either the CHP or B8 is always available.
Virtuoso performance
It won't have escaped your attention that instrumentation and control is encroaching inexorably into our bailiwicks. It started in condition-based maintenance, with plant engineers using, for example, portable ultrasonic flowmeters, vibration monitors and infrared thermal cameras. Now, like it or not, we're increasingly responsible - and not just for equipment installation, commissioning and test, but increasingly also troubleshooting and, in some cases, specification.
Waste water gets the treatment
Regulations relating to reducing pollution from industrial activities have been around in the UK for more than 150 years, while the present Pollution Prevention and Control regulations came into force in 1999, with a transitional process to complete their implementation by 2007.