Automating
data collection through wireless mesh networks and low-power sensors is
favoring the monitoring of the condition of an ever-wider array of
equipment. “Battery-powered wireless sensors allow sites to gather
continuous data at a very low cost,” explains Rajat Sadana, a principle
business development specialist for Honeywell Industrial Measurement
and Control, based in Minneapolis. “These technologies allow
maintenance engineers to collect data from locations where, in the
past, the cost of wiring a sensor would have been too high and not
justifiable.”

Sadana
reports that the initiatives already underway to create standards for
such networks should cut their deployment costs and help to spread
their use for condition monitoring. Among these initiatives are the
SP100 and Wireless Hart standards being developed by the
Instrumentation, Systems, and Automation Society (ISA), of Research
Triangle Park, N.C., and the Hart Communication Foundation, of Austin,
Texas, respectively.  The ZigBee Alliance, of San Ramon, Calif., also is promulgating a protocol for deploying small, low-power digital radios in wireless networks.

“Bringing
this data into the control room in real time can turn corrosion into a
process-control variable,” observes Dawn Eden, Honeywell’s marketing
manager for corrosion products. “It can optimize the delivery of
chemicals for controlling corrosion and microbial growth in cooling
systems.” It also can open a new window into the chemistry of processes
and establish the relationships of variables to corrosion rates.

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