Packaged burner controls lower costs, improve safety

Standards for safety instrumented systems (SISs) can be embedded in burner management controls.

By Charles Fialkowski, CFSE, Siemens Industry Inc. February 17, 2011

ANSI/ISA-84.00.01-2004 applies to safety instrumented systems (SISs), which are instrumented systems designed to prevent an event that may result in major consequences (significant harm to humans, and environmental and/or economic loss). Typically the hazards associated with burner operation are managed by an instrumented system commonly referred to as a burner management system (BMS). A BMS provides interlocks and permissives to prevent the misoperation of equipment and to safely handle the faults caused by equipment failure.

These errors may result in uncontrolled fires, explosions, implosions, and/or the unintended release of material being heated. It’s common practice in the process industries to use an instrumented system to maintain the process within normal operating limits. If the process exceeds these limits, protective functions are used to reduce the risk of these identified hazardous events.

Protective functions are usually allocated to instrumented systems, which are designed and managed to achieve or maintain a safe state when a process reaches a pre-described unsafe condition. They are found throughout many process applications is fired equipment, which includes various types of heaters and boilers.

ISA technical report ISA-TR 84.00.05-2009, Guidance on the identification of Safety Instrumented Functions (SIF) in Burner Management Systems (BMS), is intended to work in conjunction with existing BMS good engineering practices such as NFPA 85, NFPA 86, API 556, AMSE CSD-1, and API RP 14C. The intent of the technical report, issued in December 2009, is to help owner/operators implement traditional BMS functions (pre-firing, light-off, shutdown, etc.) according to the ANSI/ISA-84.00.01-2004 standard, which should help to improve both functional and safety integrity requirements.

To help make the adoption of the ISA technical report easier and more economical, some automation suppliers, like Siemens Industry Inc., have begun offering pre-packaged systems that are designed and built in accordance with both traditional application-based standards and the performance requirements of SIS. This allows the customer to focus on the application while the automation supplier takes care of the underlying technology that makes it compliant.


– Charles Fialkowski, CFSE, Siemens Industry Inc., Charles.fialkowski@siemens.com


Burner Management Systems – Industrial Automation Systems SIMATIC – USA

Siemens Industry Inc.

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