Using ISA100.11a Wireless Technology to Monitor Pressure and Temperature in a Refinery

Written by Penny Chen, Yokogawa Electric Corporation

Abstract

Using wireless technology for monitoring a variety of measuring points in Industrial Plants has

becoming a very attractive choice for plant managers. Today, the plant manager is able to build

a quick and cost effective network solution to enable flexible information acquisition and to

improve maintenance efficiency and safety.

In order to enhance reliability and safety, wireless temperature transmitters and wireless pressure

transmitters were installed to monitor temperature and pressure measuring points in a large

Traditionally, many refinery plants are still manually collecting or reading data from different

measuring points spread all over the refinery plant in order to monitor and maintain plant

operation. This is due to the high cost of installation of wired instrument networks that has not

been economically feasible in the past.

This article describes a real world example with a large chemical refinery. The refinery covers a

huge area, cabling between each wired transmitter is approximately 300 meters. Wiring the

entire refinery in order to monitor the measuring points which spread around the refinery is not

economically affordable. Therefore, many of the pressure and temperature measurements are

off-line today. It requires a human patrol to physically visit the refinery plant everyday and

manually read the pressure measurements from traditional pressure gauge and the temperature

reliable network solution which not only could realize the online continuous reading of the

pressure and temperature measurements, but also able to expend its networking capability in the

future for more measuring points and other measuring valuables.

ISA100.11a Wireless Technologies

With a variety of wireless technologies available in the market, the use of wireless technologies

for a particular monitoring application and solving a particular problem in the refinery has

existed for a decade. The ability to eliminate cabling, lower the cost of installation, has long been

considered as the biggest advantage of wireless technology. However, wireless technology has

still not been widely adapted or deployed in the industrial environment. One of the key reasons is

the lack of a standardized wireless technology designed for plant wide industrial applications and