Yokogawa Welcomes Many to New Orleans, Introduces Products

Satoru Kurosu, senior vice president of Yokogawa's Industrial Automation Marketing Headquarters and a member of Yokogawa's board of directors, presented a keynote to users at Yokogawa Corp. of America (www.yokogawa/us) user group meeting. His message focused on the company as not just an instrumentation and control company, but a full-service automation partner on a global scale.

Yokogawa's mission is to contribute to society by producing industrial automation solutions that improve peoples' lives, Kurosu said. In two years, Yokogawa will be celebrating 100 years since its founding in 1915. The company soon returned to growth after global recession of 2008, and this past fiscal year marked record revenues of ¥334.7 billion (US $4.2 billion), Kurosu indicated. 60 percent of the company's business is from outside Japan.

Kurosu added, "Yokogawa realized that automating procedures would yield great benefit, and we pioneered modular procedural automation (MPA). In refining, MPA has reducing crude switchover time by 69 percent; in petrochemicals, MPA has reduced operator manual manipulations by 90 percent and it provides safer startups and shutdowns in polymer processing."

"Now that we have plentiful supplies of natural gas through new drilling technologies, the U.S. is now a key emerging market in Yokogawa's view," Chet Mroz, CEO of Yokogawa Corp. of America, said. This will create "many global business opportunities building on our strengths in Asia and other parts of the world. We have been growing at double-digit rates for the first half of our fiscal year; we're recruiting and adding new engineers. We have a growing backlog that requires those resources."

Other news

Two new products and a product announcement were introduced during the first day of the conference.

Coriolis

The company unveiled RotaMASS LR, the world’s smallest dual bent tube Coriolis mass flow meter. The new RotaMASS LR employs a proven dual bent tube design and represents a significant advance to Yokogawa’s RotaMASS Low Flow Line product family for gas and liquid flow measurement.

Designed to be self-draining and to measure both liquids and gasses, the mass flow measurement spans from 0-40 kg/h. The accuracy is +/- 0.15% for liquids and +/- 0.5% for gasses. The RotaMASS LR meets the market’s demand for accurate and stable measurement of fluids at low flow rates. Yokogawa has developed the low flow Coriolis meter based on its proven dual bent tube design to overcome the current shortcomings of single tube low flow meters. These shortcomings include susceptibility to external vibrations and changes in ambient or process fluid temperatures which lead to less accurate and stable measurements in real-world conditions.

The ROTAMASS LR employs a dual bent tube design that optimally decouples the core measuring element from process vibration that can cause fluctuating zero stability and decrease measurement accuracy. When fluid density changes, a single tube Coriolis flow meter can become imbalanced and start to behave like an emitter. The ROTAMASS LR remains balanced due to the equal mass change in both tubes and the absence of interference from the process piping. By design, it is insensitive to fluctuations in the ambient temperature and achieves excellent zero stability under changing process conditions. The two tubes are made from C-22 alloy, which is less susceptible to thermal expansion than conventional stainless steel.

The measurement of tube temperature plays a key role in mass flow and density measurements. Normally, it is more difficult to measure temperature with Coriolis flow meters that have tubes with a smaller surface area. The ROTAMASS LR solves this problem by using an inline temperature sensor, ensuring exact and fast measurements in process temperatures ranging from -50°C to +150°C, a unique feature in the low flow Coriolis flow meter market.

The ROTAMASS LR sets a new safety standard in the low flow market, with a gas-tight, all-stainless-steel secondary containment that can handle pressures up to 65 bar. The ROTAMASS LR can be used in high pressure applications up to 400 bar.

Certification

In addition, the RotaMASS 3 series has received the National Type Evaluation Program (NTEP) Certificate of Conformance for Weighing and Measuring Devices. The certificate is for Meters Indicating Mass for stationary or vehicle mounted applications.

The NTEP Certificate is generally accepted by State Weights and Measures authorities as a basis to allow a meter to be used in a custody transfer application.

The certificate covers flow rates from 2 -900 kg/min and fluid density ranges of 0.74-1.4 s.g.  The meter can be used in 0.3 Accuracy Class applications.

Smart Data Acquisition

The GX and GP data acquisition stations and GA10 software are the first members of Yokogawa’s new SMARTDAC+ product family that incorporates Smart User Interface, Smart Architecture, and Smart Functionality design principles.

GX and GP users can now measure more input signals, save data for longer time periods, and access that data more readily via touch display screens and an all-new real-time web browser interface than previous models.

Only two buttons adorn the front panels- a record start/stop control and menu button. Press “Menu” and touch menus take over for all display navigation and setting functions of the units. Data is presented with the highest possible clarity on the standard trend, digital, bar graph and overview screens. Use of color is carefully chosen to call attention to important data and events.  

New, proprietary resistive touch screen technology senses two touch points allowing unique swipe control and pinch in/out control for fast navigation and viewing of data displays. Trend history data can be reviewed with a swipe of the display or via a calendar search screen.  

Users can quickly and easily enter descriptive batch and text message information via on-screen keyboard, an external USB keyboard or freehand on-screen with a pen stylus.

A new modular I/O architecture allows the user to add input channels and alarm relays in any combination and at any time, simply by purchasing the required module(s) and installing them in rear panel slots.

The standard Ethernet interface provides a full range of network functions that include web server, FTP file transfer, email messaging, Modbus TCP client/server connectivity and more.