HART device status, alarming

By Plant Engineering Staff May 23, 2006

Standard HART device status information can be used to generate PlantWeb alerts for any HART device with Emerson Process Management’s newly released version 8.4 of its DeltaV system software. This allows for predictive diagnostics that can head off abnormal plant situations. Conditional alarming has been extended to FOUNDATION fieldbus devices to make intelligent field devices more discriminating to reduce nuisance alarms.

“Operators need to know when critical field devices are in need of attention and need not be bothered when devices and processes are operating normally,” said Dave Deitz director of marketing for the DeltaV system. “By extending our PlantWeb alerts to HART protocol devices we can alert maintenance and operations personnel to potential trouble areas heading off potential process disruptions. This extension of PlantWeb alerts to HART devices is significant for installed base customers who can now take advantage of hidden predictive diagnostics in their installed legion of HART devices.”

“Similarly, by adding conditional alarming support for analog input, discrete input and PID function blocks for FOUNDATION fieldbus devices it is possible to suppress nuisance alarms that interfere with attention to process operations,” said Deitz. “Configuration of conditional alarms ‘on’ and/or ‘off’ delay times can significantly reduce the numbers of nuisance alarms that are caused by temporary transient conditions.”