Tesla driver killed while using autopilot

Tesla driver killed while using autopilot: The U.S. announced on Thursday the 40-year-old owner of a technology company who nicknamed his vehicle “Tessy” and had praised its sophisticated “autopilot” system just one month earlier for preventi

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Advances in control systems

This 15 minute video from ABB is worth seeing to see clever uses of technology to make the operators job easier.  I would like your views on alarm shelving that is mentioned in the video. You can see the video in this link:
System 800xA with extended operator workplace

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Pipelne that spilled oil was badly thinned

There are excellent lessons to be learnt fom this incident. It reinforces what I have always been saying : Smart technology needs Smart people! It cannot function alone...

http://news.yahoo.com/pipeline-spilled-oil-california-coast-badly-corroded-073802050.html?soc_src=copy


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USB sticks and security issues

In 2012, two power plants in the USA were affected by malware attacks, brought in by USB sticks. Read the article in this link.
Have you banned USB sticks in your plant?
 
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How secure are your redundant systems?

An article in the Guardian highlights the importance of functional testing of your redundant systems. In the incidents mentioned, two helicopters of identical make faced a main lubrication oil system failure while airborne. Though the back up system came on line, an alarm indicated that it was not working properly, so the crew had to make emergency landings in the sea. Later it was found out that the back up system was indeed working fine, but the alarm was wrongly configured.
Read the article in this link. 


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When the back up fails........

 When I was working in Saudi Arabia, the 3000MTD gas based methanol plant was operated with state of the art DCS systems. Just before a planned turnaround, instrument personnel were working with some control room underfloor cables when, by mistake, all power to the DCS displays were lost. It was restored after 30 minutes. The plant parameters were maintained throughout the upset without any safety issue as the controllers in auto were doing their job. However a case study presented in 2012 by Shri KC Tripathy and others of NTPC shows how safety hazards cropped up during "complete and simultaneous DCS failure in two 500MW units"
The case study mentions among other useful learnings, the following:
"All processors (active and redundant) abruptly rebooted at once. Thereby both redundant network & redundant processor concepts of DCS design were defeated".

 Read the case study in this link.



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Wireless and explosion proof instruments

 Read a good article on wireless instruments and how they can be made explosion proof or intrinsically safe in this link.
PS: The article is for information only and I am not recommending any product.
 
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SIS in field instrumentation

 Read a good article http://www.automationworld.com/sis-field-instrumentation


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Applying Tank Farm safety Standards for India - Honeywell paper

A good article by Honeywell India about Applying Tank farm safety standards in India can be read in this link.

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Cyber security for chemical plants

Dr Trevor Kletz has said "what you don't have cannot leak". This was with reference to hazardous chemicals. It makes sense then and makes sense now. But with the advent of Internet and remote operation of chemical plants, we often think that the best way to keep a plants intranet secure is not to connect it with the Internet. In other words, "when you are not connected , you cannot be hacked". Last year, the cyber attack on a nuclear development facility in Iran, caused centrifuges to speed up but the control room did not display the increased speed! It is a very interesting story and just imagine what could happen if a cyber take over of critical equipment in a chemical plant takes place? Ensure your systems are adequately protected and conduct cyber security drills along with your regular mock drills! Read the very interesting article about the centrifuge incident in this link.

Process Safety - Keep it simple

I often think that today we are complicating things too much in process safety, in an already complicated World! This generation of plant operators have been inundated with technology. While some of the technology is excellent, not all of them really help the plant operator. Information overload is the bane of today's PSM programs. When I was a shift in charge at an ammonia plant, we had pneumatic control system (no DCS), but it was so user friendly. I would sit in the center of the control room and at a glance I got to know the plant status. The control room had three operators - one for the front end of the plant, one for the back end and one senior guy looking after both. During emergencies, the senior guy would coordinate the actions very swiftly as he could see the complete plant status just at a glance. The whole ammonia plant had only about 200 alarms that were located on the panel. The critical ones were painted red. By experience we would know which alarm meant what! We never had a serious process safety incident!!I managed to get some pictures to illustrate what I am talking about. 

Our control room looked similar to the one at the left. The table at the center was a flat table. The shift engineer used to sit at this table.The control panel is just below the clock.The flowsheet of the entire plant (called a mimic) was depicted at the panel top

This was a field controller.  See how simple it is! The red arrow is the setpoint.

 This temperature recorder was similar to the one we used to record secondary reformer top temperature and methanator temperature.









The message I am trying to convey is try to keep it as simple as possible. Buy only what you want and not what you get! (This is especially true for DCS and electronic instrumentation)

The importance of correct measurement in Process Safety

In February 2008, a stealth bomber of the US airforce crashed soon after take off. The pilots ejected safely but the loss was USD 1.4 billion. Wikepedia mentions the following about the cause for the crash...
"The findings of the investigation stated that the B-2 crashed after "heavy, lashing rains" caused water to enter skin-flush air-data sensors, which feed data to the computerized flight-control system. The water distorted preflight readings in three of the plane's 24 sensors, causing the flight-control system to send an erroneous correction to the B-2 on takeoff. The B-2 quickly stalled, became unrecoverable, and crashed. The sensors in question measure numerous environmental factors, including air pressure and density, for data to calculate airspeed, altitude and attitude. Because of the faulty readings, the flight computers determined inaccurate airspeed readings and incorrectly indicated a downward angle for the aircraft, which contributed to an early rotation and an un-commanded 30-degree pitch up and left yaw, resulting in the stall"
Whatever advanced process control systems you may have, it ultimately depends on the measurement reading that the system receives. Focus on the integrity of your primary measuring devices.
Read the article about the crash in this link.

Process safety - "simple" is getting lost

"I have always wished that my computer would be as easy to use as my telephone. My wish has come true. I no longer know how to use my telephone."--Bjarne Stroustrup, Danish computer scientist

I have the same feeling as the scientist when I see the modern advanced control systems. Ask any operation personnel about the meaning of all the jargon used in the current day instrumentation field - human engineered, wireless protocols, fieldbus, etc.. and I am sure he will blink at you. Today's control systems are so advanced that I suspect we are barely using 10 % of their capabilities. Does anyone think about the end user - namely the plant operating personnel? Did anyone really analyse whether we did need all the capabilities or we could have done it in a simpler way? A good example is alarm overload - today vendors sell alarm management software!! Why do we need so many alarms in the first place? When you do in house modifications, do not go overboard and suggest all the latest instrumentation. Study what is needed for you and implement only those that are needed.

Virtual plants - boon or bane?

A good discussion that highlights the following comments from one of the participants:

"Greg: Can't they just address the operator shortage issue with more and better automation?

Mart: Modern automation technology provides excellent return on investment, and can be used to operate process plants with fewer qualified operators. In general, highly automated plants have less operations-related errors. Modern control systems are very advanced, and can handle many tasks quicker, more safely and at a lower cost than a human operator. Advances in automation system and process technology allow process plants to operate longer without downtime. However, in a highly automated plant, the role of the operator is different and more difficult. Operators in these plants have to monitor a sophisticated system and make decisions about the health of the process and the performance of the system based upon trends and meta-information (information about information). In many cases instead of actively doing something, they have to review the information presented and make a decision about whether to do something or nothing at all. Also, because the system and process are more reliable, operators may seldom or never see upset conditions, and can quickly lose critical skills necessary to deal with those situations. This often results in compromised operating conditions. Studies show that the greatest cause of operational loss in the process industries is due to operator error. The need for a virtual plant is even greater in a highly automated process plant.

Stan: So, is the virtual plant only an operator training tool?

Mart: Not necessarily. The virtual plant is also an effective tool to reduce the risks in automation projects. While modern, field-based automation systems have great reliability and performance, the risk introduced by human engineering still remains. The risks may include hidden errors and issues in the automation system application software undetected until they cause process or operational issues.

Advanced control strategies that are not fully vetted can have affect plant operations adversely. In many plants, the operating procedures are in error or incomplete, so they are not used or trusted".

Ultimately, even if we automate the plants to the fullest extent, it is not possible to control emergencies and plant upsets. These need a trained experienced operator to handle the situation. As we automate the plants more and more there is a risk that operators loose their trouble shooting abilities. Read the full discussion in this link.

Disappearing control rooms and process safety

I read an interesting article about the future of control rooms which basically says that in the future, there will not be any central control rooms in chemical plants, but operators moving about using wireless devices to communicate with the control system. While I appreciate that technology must be used for the benefit of mankind, I wonder whether we are opening new frontiers in process safety. As technology envelops us, I feel that the technology swamped human being is beginning to loose his trouble shooting and thinking capabilities. The future process safety issue will be fighting against the syndrome "I rather believe an instrument than use my brain!".
Read the article in this link

Control systems - do not complicate things!

The last decade has seen a huge change in the control systems of process plants with advanced DCS systems and other new technologies being deployed. I personally feel that the onus lies on the customer to implement only what he requires and will be useful to operators during an emergency / for trouble shooting and not to implement the complete solutions that come along with the package. I have seen in many incidents that the cause of the incident was caused by too much information coming to the operator from the system thus overloading him and diminishing his capabilities to act correctly.
I strongly believe in the principle that WE HAVE TO KEEP IT SIMPLE YET FUNCTIONAL!
Why do we have to complicate things and then work on uncomplicating them?
Read an article on the dangers that are brought on by newer technologies and control systems in this link

Advanced instrumentation at Refinery

Please read this article

The Worlds Largest Foundation Fieldbus Project
Reliance Petroleum Limited Needed Foundation Fieldbus to Manage the Most Complex Refinery in the World

A picture of the control room is also given in the article.The article also mentions that over 200 of the commissioning staff were given troubleshooting training.