Emerson predicted on Tuesday that the next ten years will see exponential growth in the adoption of wireless and pervasive sensing applications that help companies maximize safety and reliability, optimize production and enable Industrial Internet of Things (IoT) strategies.
The Emerson wireless portfolio of gateways and devices support Emerson’s Plantweb digital ecosystem that harnesses industrial IoT to expand digital intelligence to the entire manufacturing enterprise, while providing an architecture for either on- or off-premise monitoring. Providing the communications network for industrial IoT, wireless is also helping customers collaborate with Emerson’s experts through remote monitoring and other cloud-based services.
Emerson wireless technologies, based on the internationally recognized WirelessHART standard approved by the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) in 2010, are widely implemented in refineries, oil fields, offshore platforms, chemical plants and other industrial facilities around the world. With them, manufacturing personnel obtain plant information on-demand to achieve operational certainty, including greater reliability, worker and plant safety, reduced emissions and lower risk of environmental impacts.
A key technology of Emerson’s Plantweb™ digital ecosystem, wireless products have transformed global industrial facilities around the world. As many technologies of the past decade have accelerated and improved information at people’s fingertips, industrial wireless has given manufacturers the digital technology to access essential data to make better decisions and improve operational performance.
“Wireless is arguably the most impactful technology for industrial manufacturers since the introduction of digital instrumentation more than three decades ago,” says Bob Karschnia, vice president and general manager, wireless, Emerson Automation Solutions. “Over the past 10 years, industrial wireless combined with smart sensors have provided the foundation that will support cloud-based applications, remote monitoring and other industrial IoT programs over the next decade.”
By collaborating with customers on early installations, Emerson helped introduce the world’s first industrial wireless automation standard in 2007. Since then, Emerson has surpassed 10 billion hours of wireless operations across more than 32,000 networks, proving its reliability, robustness and security. While initial adoption focused on harsh, remote and difficult to reach environments, wireless has expanded customers’ automation ecosystems from core functions to new applications such as acoustic monitoring, corrosion detection and power consumption monitoring.
New plant construction is leveraging wireless technology for other enterprise-wide applications, such as equipment health monitoring and energy management, with upwards of 20 percent wireless infrastructure.
“Given the ‘new normal’ for oil prices and the intense focus on getting more value from existing assets, companies are increasingly turning to wireless as a cost-effective and highly efficient technology for fleet-wide performance optimization,” Karschnia said. “In the next 15 years, there could be 100 percent wireless plants, just as many homes today have cut the cord on wired telephone service.”
Emerson recently announced its new dual-mode wireless gateway which helps customers establish a robust and flexible wireless plant infrastructure, supporting both WirelessHART and ISA100 industrial wireless communications standards. To help manufacturers minimize potentially negative impacts on their operations, Emerson recently introduced technologies for advanced wireless detection of piping corrosion, steam and gas leaks, as well as wireless monitoring of power consumption.
As manufacturers accelerate digital transformation and workforce evolution, Emerson unveiled earlier this month significant enhancements to its Plantweb digital ecosystem, its comprehensive industrial IoT automation platform.
Built on the foundation of process control and safety systems, Plantweb expands on existing automation infrastructure to make the promise of Industrial IoT scalable and achievable, with a broad portfolio of Pervasive Sensing technologies, an extensive suite of analytical software tools, secure and robust data infrastructure devices and expert services.
Emerson’s Pervasive Sensing is the foundation of the Plantweb digital ecosystem, providing enhanced visibility into process performance and asset health, so experts have the information needed to drive operational improvements.
This increasingly robust network of sensing, measuring and monitoring technologies features more than 50 wireless devices for temperature, pressure, corrosion, vibration and acoustic. The portfolio has been expanded to include the new wireless Rosemount 928 toxic gas and Therm-o-Disc Power Meter monitoring products.
