Instruments for control
Help is at hand for plant engineers facing up to the challenge of handling instrumentation and control. Brian Tinham reports on recent developments
Testing safety valves
Late in 2006, an RSA (Royal & SunAlliance) engineer surveyor was involved in the testing of safety valves at a coal-fired power station on a boiler return service. After testing was complete, a major failure occurred on the plant. The engineer surveyor, the station engineer and an engineer from the safety valve test company were enveloped in a huge steam cloud. Unfortunately, the engineer surveyor and safety valve test engineer were seriously hurt.
Automatic for the people
REM probably didn't have plant automation on their minds when they released that album in 1992, but computing for the masses is reinvigorating control, writes Brian Tinham