Just Like Distributed Control, Distributed Safety Is Coming Soon to a Process Plant Near You, Maybe Your Own In the beginning, all control was distributed in the field near each particular process. Much of this control was manual, with islands of pneumatic-based automation. Then came the inaptly named “distributed control system,” which was, in […]
Refining
As mentioned in my previous blogs on the book Control Loop Foundation – Batch and Continuous Processes, the application examples included in Chapter 16 illustrate the various ways single loop and multi-loop control techniques may be used automate plant control. The second workshop exercise in this chapter allows the reader to explore the different features […]
In the wee hours early one morning not too long ago a firewall ceased operating at a major oil company refinery, and while there were no dramatic explosions or oil spills, the end result was five hours of lost production and a cyber incident that caused unplanned downtime. The shutdown was not the result of […]
The control systems commonly used in the process industry are based on the single-loop and multi-loop techniques described in Control Loop Foundation – Batch and Continuous Processes. Some combination of these techniques is often required to meet product specification and plant throughput targets. The application examples included in Chapter 16 of Control Loop Foundation are […]
Defense in depth: It’s more than just the technology By Jason Urso The biggest cybersecurity vulnerability could very well be a belief—the belief that a cybersecurity system, even a good one, is guaranteed to stop every threat, every time. This is simply not true. Due to ever-changing cybersecurity threats, a cybersecurity program must be designed […]