System Integration & Control Systems Design


Honeywell's newest version of Experion PKS

August 2010 System Integration & Control Systems Design

Experion R400 protects manufacturers from the high cost of evolving technology and includes new turbine control capabilities for power generators.

Honeywell announced it has added several major enhancements to its flagship Experion Process Knowledge System (PKS) to help process manufacturers more easily and cost effectively manage their automation and control systems in the face of constantly evolving technology. Experion R400 includes advancements that lower the cost of open system ownership, thanks to features such as an extended support life, flexible direct on-process migration paths, virtualisation, and easier installation and migration. These elements allow industrial facilities to focus on leveraging open systems benefits to improve business instead of managing the challenges with systems themselves.

In addition to these management features, Experion now also offers an integrated turbine control system that allows power generators to improve their plant performance through tighter integration between boilers and turbines. This gives plants better control of their turbines, allowing them to produce energy more efficiently by maximising demand swings while reducing fuel consumption and production costs.

In use at facilities in all major processing industries around the globe, Experion tightly integrates plant subsystems – including process control, safety instrumented systems, security and advanced control – to improve overall safety, reliability, efficiency and sustainability. Process operators, for instance, have greater visibility into how their processes are affecting the overall plant and can make better informed decisions in the control room.

“It is no secret that the introduction of open systems brought both great benefits as well as significant challenges to the processing industries,” said Scott Hillman, global solutions director, Honeywell Process Solutions. “The enhancements we have made to Experion are designed to help alleviate most of those challenges by giving plants an easier and much more cost-effective way to keep their operations running smoothly, even as operating systems and associated software are constantly changing.”

Operating Experion in a virtual environment, for example, can greatly reduce the number of PCs needed at plants, simplify management and ensure software continues functioning properly even as platforms are updated. Additionally, Experion R400 extends the availability of operating systems and key infrastructure components to help prevent them from becoming outdated or obsolete. Plants with older versions of Experion can now upgrade to R400 more easily with extended on-process migration and automatic-install features. This allows plants to more-quickly upgrade their systems on-process with larger jumps between releases.

The system also features a new Profibus Gateway that provides redundancy, further improving the reliability of critical process control applications such as intelligent motor control centres and remote critical equipment monitoring.

“In general, technology today seems to become obsolete the moment it hits the market, but the manufacturing industry is in no position to play a continuous game of catch up,” Hillman said. “Experion R400 fits into Honeywell’s long history of protecting customers’ technology investments. It is designed to help give those manufacturers the peace of mind that the technology purchase they make today will continue to be well protected into the future.”

For more information contact Debbie Rae, Honeywell Southern Africa, +27 (0)11 695 8000, [email protected], www.honeywell.co.za



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