PROCESS INSTRUMENTATION

In an industry there will be number of manufacturing processes. Any method of manufacturing a product is called a process. A process may consist of number of unit operations (like distillation, evaporation, drying, separation etc). To support these unit operations effectively, we need to have an accurate measurement technology and a control system. This is what the role of instrumentation in an industry. Process control is the regulation of an industrial process. In the early days of industrial history, process control was uite simple. Typically a plant operator observed a process and operated a valve or some other mechanism to control the process. In these days of advanced instrumentation the automatic devices have simplified the !ob of human workers, by the use of sophisticated devices and instruments for the measurement of process parameters and modem techni ues with the support of intelligent system (use of "icroprocessors). Process Variable Process variable is a physical uantity, which can change such as pressure, flow, level, temperature etc. The process variable is also called as measured variable. Automatic process control is the process of measuring the controlled variable (process variable or input) and comparing it with the desired variable (set point) and manipulating (computing) an output called the manipulated variable so on to bring the measured variable to the set point. 3.1 Control Loops 1. Open loop In this loop no information from the process is feed back to the controller (loop with no feedback)

#ig $.% &pen loop control 2. Close loop 'ere the process is controlled by the continuos information received from the process itself, it means the system has a feed back.

#ig $.( )losed loop control 3.2 Principles o! pne"#atic instr"#entation In olden days the plant was managed by Pneumatic Instrumentation systems. *ven now there are industries working on pneumatic instruments. These instruments were supportive right from detection to computing and even for data lo$$in$. +epending upon the flapper no,,le position the back pressure from the no,,le will act on the relay input diaphragm which in turn will regulate the output based on the relay setting. No%%le&!lapper action If we position a #lapper same distance from the front of the no,,le is unrestricted, provided the no,,le diameter is considerably larger than the restricted diameter. In these case the pressure in the no,,le backpressure compartment will be nearly acts on the other

hand. &n the other hand if the flapper is brought in contact with the no,,le the flow through the no,,le will be shut off e-cept for the shunt leakage. In this the backpressure will build up almost to the supply pressure. .etween these two positions the backpressure will vary linearly according to fig. below. In such a case a pneumatic relay can comfortably drive an output of $ to %/ P0I for the range of input. In some cases, depending upon the manufacturers design the no,,le back pressure may be as low as % to / P0I where it re uires a pneumatic relay capable of amplifying the pressure output to $ to %/ P0I standard.

#ig $.$ 1o,,le #lapper 0ystem