A full meeting room greeted Fieldbus Foundation (www.fieldbus.org) Chair John Berra and Executive Director Rich Timoney at the March 24-25 annual General Assembly of the network organization in Houston. After 15 years, the technology and specifications are solid and being adopted in the field in large numbers. Technical leaders Dave Glanzer and Stephen Mitschke explained that final details were coming together for some last specifications including safety and Ethernet.
B. R. Mehta, senior vice president of Reliance Industries Ltd., of Jamnagar, India, detailed the completion of the largest Foundation Fieldbus installation to date at his large refinery. The refinery project with a crude processing capacity of 580,000 barrels per day relies on more than 15,000 tags connected to Fieldbus. The system used Field Device Tool/Device Type Manager (FDT/DTM) technology coupled to the Electronic Device Description Language (EDDL) used by Foundation Fieldbus.
Consensus of the meeting was that Foundation Fieldbus network technology has come of age and is providing substantial benefit to users.Fieldbus Foundation www.fieldbus.org
