Emerson Dust Collector Monitoring & Control Solution (P241)

Shawn Tierney meets up with Eugenio Silva of Emerson to learn all about Dust Collection Systems, and Emerson’s Monitoring and Control Solution in this episode of The Automation Podcast.

For any links related to this episode, check out the “Show Notes” located below the video.

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Shawn Tierney (host): Welcome back to the automation podcast. My name is Shawn from Insights, and I wanna thank you for tuning back in. Now in this episode, I had the pleasure of meeting up with Eugene Silva from Emerson to learn all about the industrial control and monitoring system that comes with their industrial dust collectors. Now I thought it was very interesting. I hope you do as well.

But before we jump into this episode, I do wanna thank our members who made the video edition possible. So So when a vendor does a sponsor of the episode, the video becomes a member only perk, and that is just $5 a month to get started. So thank you members for making the video edition possible. With that, I also wanna thank our sponsor for this week’s show, the automationschool.com and the automationblog.com. I have an update later in the show what’s going on on both sites, and I hope you’ll, stick around and listen to that, towards the end of the show.

But with that said, let’s go ahead and jump into this week’s episode of the automation podcast. It is my pleasure to welcome Emerson back on the show and Eugene on the show to talk about dust collector monitoring. You guys can see the slide if you’re watching dust collector monitoring and control solutions. I’m excited about this because this is a solution versus, like, a discrete product. So with that said, Eugene, would you please introduce yourself to our audience?

Eugenio Silva (Emerson): Yes. Shawn, thank you very much for this opportunity. Hello, everyone. Here’s Eugenio Silva. I’m a product manager, intelligence automation within Emerson, the discrete automation part of Emerson.

I’m glad today gonna share some, some of our understanding and learnings with the dust collector monitoring control solution. And, when I talk about that, Emerson is also involved in in others, types of solutions that, our purpose is to drive innovation that makes the world healthier, safer, smart, and more sustainable. And I’m also responsible for continuous emission monitoring, pest collectors is one, utility, energy and compressed air management solutions. So for today, I prepared something that, we go a little bit, into why this type of, test collector solution is important, from understand of our customers and industry point of view. We’re going to look into the fundamentals of a dust collection, from the particle sensors to the dust collector systems, and then dive in into the dust collector solution where I’m going to provide you, some features, also explanation why they are there, and how this kind of capabilities deliver value to our end users and customers, and, hopefully, to have time as well to have a short, recorded demo that, brings us, full scope how the operators look into into that solution when they they use it.

Shawn Tierney (host): But before we jump in, I wanna thank the automationschool.com for sponsoring this episode of the show. That’s where you’ll find all of my online courses on Allen Bradley and Siemens PLCs and HMIs. So if you know anybody who needs to get up to speed on those products, please mention the automationschool.com to them. And now let’s jump back into the show.

Eugenio Silva (Emerson): In terms of key applications, industries use cases, dust collector is essential for many industries that produce dust, produce any kind of a pounder, any kind of a fume, and typically air pollution control, boundary processing, handling, industrial dust, fume ventilation are covered by one or another way by dust collectors. And, the industries that I put in both, these are the the dirty ones in the sense that they produce a lot of, particle, either in terms of gases or dust. Therefore, the regulations that are in these industries are quite strong. So cement, metals, chemical plus, carbon, black and toner, like lithium battery assembly, disassembly, metal foundry. And what is interesting is the either you produce a waste that you have to manage it properly, can be also recycled, for example, in the industries like plastics in food or wood.

All the collected dust that you have, you can also reuse and sometimes recycle. But why? Why this is important? Why is it important to extract dust from these industries? Let’s start on the right side because this is what the the customer is looking for.

Because the cost of our pollution, the hazards, this this safe safety accidents that can be caused by this kind of harmful airborne and particles and forms are so substantial, then of course, it’s very much regulated in all these industries. And if you calculate the costs on the public health, Sometimes big accidents in plants where even big fires or hazards to people operating the plant. We talk about billions per year, the cost of that. And one of the consequences of having such issues is that when the dust extraction system is not working properly or you have really a downtime. For example, I’m going to explain that this really depends on components that are very, they use so often that they wear down, like filters, like post files.

And each time that we have a downtime is not the cost of the dust collector downtime that’s important. It’s the overall downtime costs that imposes to the operation of the plant because in order to be conformist, they have to stop operating until they fix the issue. And these downtimes, of course, arise in many ways in different aspects. How complex is this dust collector. But I’m I’m going to give you, some insights that, if a dust collector system does not have any solution to monitoring real time or control, the efficiency.

Basically, the personnel is managing these assets without any sight, and everything can go wrong. That’s why the TCO and the maintenance aspects are quite important. Because if you’re not aware where is the problem, when you have to plan and this becomes a firefighting or reactive mode, then your costs are going to be quite high. And when you talk about the TCO, it’s about the cost of the equipment, the acquisition, the cost of operation, meaning not only the personnel, but in this case, we use a lot of compressed air. I’m going to explain why.

The maintenance costs, as we explained, and the disposal costs. Disposal means, the filter bags that must be replaced and and changed, but also the the dust, the fume, all the elements that must be, properly managed and recycling sometimes. So this is the aspects why it’s important. Now let’s turn us about, the benefits and savings. So if you use the dust collector solutions, of any kind that can monitor in real time all the aspects, of the operation of a dust collector system and, also contributes turning maintenance from reactive to preventative and maybe predictive, then the best thing that you can do is to avoid huge penalties.

As you can see on this graph, every decade, let’s say, the fines are getting steeper. And the reason for that is because of the the damage and the result of a big, like, say, issue on the plant regarding to this dust part is is quite heavy. So, therefore, we talk about 100 k’s or even plus in some industries like primary metal and chemical, where one single incident, it’s about a 100 k in average or more. And then, of course, to avoid that and to be completely compliance, you have to operate that systems, in many cases, 24 by seven. And, therefore, any way possible to reduce downtime and, as a plus, reduce the energy costs because for compressed air, you have to use electricity, then, it pays off because you’re going to be full time compliant.

And the other thing is if you do properly, monitor and control your dust collector system, you also increase the filtration efficiency. So that means you are far from the high levels, where after that threshold, you would be penalized. You can operate under, conformist, under compliance, but can also expand the equipment life. For example, the life bags, the post valves, you don’t have it to replace as often, which is the case if you don’t do any real time monitoring diagnostics. On the left side, the way that we talk about improving maintenance is the total cost.

When we talk about the filter life, at least one unit of a filter, It’s about 18 k, US dollars. And you see that, the tip of a iceberg is just the purchase price. The dust collector system, like, of course, has an acquisition cost. But below that, as a total cost of ownership, you have the energy that you expand utilizing the systems. You have the filter bags.

You have to keep parts in your inventory. You have to dispose of that. And, of course, you have the downtime costs and also the labors labor costs. Now I’m going to just to give, a chance to say, okay. Tell me how a dust collector system works.

Shawn Tierney (host): Before we get to that, we gotta pay the bills. So I wanna tell you about our sponsor, the automationschool.com. It’s actually the next room over. We have a huge training room. We have, some of the most unique products you’ll be able to work on.

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Eugenio Silva (Emerson): And these are going to be general principles and basics. In general, a dust collector system looks like this. It’s a unit where the air is pulled in at the bottom of the compartment, and this could be forced or not. And then the air gets out, on the top, the outlet, and the dust is collected on the outside of the bag. So if you see this, in this picture, we have one full bag in kind of light brown color with a specific fabric, could be porosis fabric, a PVC, or some even paper in some cases.

And then the cleaner exceeds at the top. And the what happens is that the dust cake builds up on the bags, on the outside part of the bag. And, if you see the number one on top, in that particular, entry point, we have two pulse valves with, compressed air in order to shake a little bit these, post bags, filter bags, and then knocks down the dust out of these bags, and then they are collected by a hopper at the bottom. Okay? So that’s basically, in general, how it works the principle.

It’s a bit more complicated. Here is just to show that in order to automate a dust collector system including the filter bags, we use, a combination of, electrical and pneumatic, components. And these are from post valves, the ones that continuously blow air into these pipes, the compressed air tanks that hold the right pressure and the right compressed air capacity in order to keep the filtration efficiency very high. Then you have the filter regulators that, you have to bring, the pressure of this line to higher enough, to to be efficient, but not so high to spend too much compressed air. Then you can use controllers, black boxes that are able to do a time based sequencing, but these are not so so much sometimes efficient because it doesn’t take into consideration all the diagnostics that you can get out of it.

And then, basically, the very important element is this, particle sensor that is on the outside of the clean air because that is gonna be your canary in the mind. Right? It’s gonna be the one that indicates if the filter, system is efficient efficient and if the the job is done right. And then the other things. But let’s go back to a very interesting view.

You remember this picture here that, you you’re looking at, a cross session of the dust collector. Now you could imagine how it looks like from the top. From the top, it looks like that. There is a compressed air tank, that covers, certain portion of the filters units. For example, it’s very common that a filter, complete filter unit, might have different compartments.

And in each of these compartments, you have a series of filter bags. And then imagine that you provide short but very powerful pulses of compressed air that are periodically injected on top of this columns. And below, there’s a filter bag. So, therefore, they are going to to receive to expand a little bit, and the dust cake then, outside of of their surface follows. And by inertial forces, of course, this dust is accumulated at the bottom, which is, extracted into a hopper.

Of course, now depending of the number of the filters per line, per roll, these pulse valves needs to pulse a little bit faster or not. And the interval time, if you just follow time based approach, could be three to six minutes. Now if you calculate the average filter units, you may have 12 of these filter bags. You can have about seven to 10 pulse valves per unit. It’s very common that, one large installation would have about, like, 500 pulse valves and four, six times more filters, install it.

And imagine that if each of them having boost every three minutes, 24 by seven, during seven days a week. So can you imagine the amount of compressed air that can be spent? That’s why these pulses must be very short and powerful, in hundred milliseconds to avoid it also big waste. I think that, picture on the left side, just to simply say that, it’s a lot of, interesting things to to get the dust removal, but basically is a jet of compressed air on top, that shakes the filter. And then by gravity, the dust cake is removed.

Shawn Tierney (host): It’s not just a filter. You know, I think main main people may just think, well, a dust collector is just this bag that catches all the dust. You’re actually, you know, you’re you you do have the bags, but, you’re using compressed air to sequentially, depends depending on how many you have, shake those bags in a sense by blowing air into them, to shake off the dust so it falls into the hopper. And so I can you can definitely see, like you were mentioning, if you have lots of these cylinders or these bags, then the sequencing has to be, you know, pretty pretty precise and and pretty, repeatable to make sure you’re you’re cleaning all of the bags off. And I’m I’m assuming too, you need to know when the hopper is full because everything stops working if if if the hopper gets, over full.

So very interesting. I think your diagrams do a great job of explaining it as well.

Eugenio Silva (Emerson): Yeah. If I play a little bit when I mention that, it’s a a little bit the reverse, way of our vacuum cleaner. Right? Because Yeah. We suck the the dust inside of the bags.

Mhmm. And when the bags are completely full clogged, the suction, power, it’s far reduced. Right? So then you have to to empty our, let’s say, filter bags. Here is the although the all the dust is accumulated on the outside, the outer surface of the fabric, but the effect is the same.

If there’s so much dust on the surface or out of the surface, then, the air that is shown here, the intake, the air, and then the filter simply stops. That’s why affects completely the efficiency of, that, unit. And the post jet cleaning is a way to unclog or to clean, the filters in order to bring them to the more efficient operation.

Shawn Tierney (host): Yeah. Especially if you have lots of dust, you need an automatic way to continue to clean it and get it off of the filter and into the bin. So yeah. No. That makes a lot of sense.

Eugenio Silva (Emerson): Yeah. In in other cases, although you talk about, dust, of course, it could be any kind of a pounder. Like, for example, in the foods and beverage industry, you don’t want this for example, let’s say, a dry milk production. You don’t want that dust to be floating around because it can bring contamination. But believe it or not, it can ignite fire sometimes.

So that’s why it’s important to to get that completely eliminated. So this is the part that very people would say, okay, on the outlet where the the air should be cleaner, as you can see on the right side, that this, particle sensor is located at the outlet, clean air side. It has a very interesting the way it works is quite interesting. We use a we have a sensor in our portfolio called p 152 that, we take advantage of this triboelectric effect. Basically, this sensor, is coated with PTFE or a Teflon layer, so it’s completely electronic, electric isolated from from, of course, the media.

And then when the dust starts touching, that probe, a DC charge is transferred. But because of this, sensor probe is completely isolated, we set the flow layer, the resolution and the electric charge is in the order of a peak ramp. So 10 minus 12. And that the resolution is about point five picoamp. So, therefore, if you’re touching the particles, depends of their size, They are going to generate more or less electricity that’s going to be transferred.

And the ones that are just surround, they are not touching. For example, imagine that this, duct air exhausting pipe is quite big. A bit half meter, maximum one meter around that sensor, the particle also generates, induced charge in AC. And by measuring that, we have an idea about how clean is, of course, there that’s getting out. But it’s a bit more tricky than you can imagine because it looks like this.

Shawn Tierney (host): Hey, everyone. I hope you enjoy this week’s show. I know I really enjoyed it. And, of course, I wanna thank our members for making the video edition possible. So this vendor did not sponsor this episode.

So the video edition is available for members, and there’s some great graphics in their presentation you guys may wanna check out. Now with that said, we do have some really exciting podcast episodes coming up. I’m sitting down with Inductive. I’m sitting down with Software Toolbox. I’m sitting down with Siemens and a bunch of other vendors.

So we have plenty of new podcasts coming up in the coming weeks this summer. And I also wanted to give you an update of what’s going on over at the automation blog. We’ve had some new articles come out. Brandon Cooper, one of our freelancers, wrote a great article about emulating Allen Bradley e threes. We had a vendor, actually, submit an article and sponsor the site to submit an article about what makes a good automated palletizer.

We also had an update about the automation museum. That’s a fundraiser we’re running. We’re trying to open a automation museum. I got a lot of legacy stuff I’d like to donate to it, and I’d love to have it so you can come in and actually walk through, not just see the stuff, but actually learn on it. Right?

So maybe you have some old stuff in your plant. You come out to the automation museum, and you can learn how to use it. With that said, we’re also looking at possibly doing a podcast for automation museum to drive awareness of legacy automation. So any of you out there interested in that, contact me directly. And, you can do so over at the automationblog.com.

Just click on the contact button. And, we also have an article two articles from Brandon Cooper about things he learned as he transitioned from working in a plant to traveling around and visiting other plants to help them with their processes and automation. So check those articles out over at the automation blog. And finally, over at the automation school, you know, we have the new factor IO courses. We also have I just added a new lesson to the logics version of that course.

Somebody wanted to try to use bit shifts instead of counters, so I added a lesson on that. Plus, I’m now starting to update all of the courses, including the brand new ones I’m working on. So you’re gonna see a brand new start here lesson later in the week, and I’m working on some cool emulation, lateral logic for my PLC courses that if you don’t have any push buttons or limit switches, you can actually use this code I’m gonna give you for free to simulate the widget machine that I use as kind of the basis for my teaching. So in any case, check that out if you’re in one of my PLC courses over at the automationschool.com. And with that said, you know, I’m very thankful for all the vendors who come on, especially those who sponsor the episodes so I don’t have to do these commercials.

I’m not a big commercial guy, but I do wanna thank you for hanging in there and listening through this update. And now we’ll get right back into this episode of the automation podcast.

Eugenio Silva (Emerson): Every time you get, use the jet boost with the boost valves on top of the filter bags, it creates a peak. So that means the cleaning cycles that are happening in a duration of, just a 100 milliseconds. That’s why they are very, very thin. And they happening every two, three minutes, per roll. They have to they have in nature a little bit of noise because imagine that every time that, you clean, more dust gets into inside of the the filter back.

So that means it’s like when you clean your vacuum cleaner, immediately when you turn on that, some of this dust is gonna get inside immediately, and that’s the peak. But now imagine that, you have a rupture in the filter or you have a big role because, unfortunately, these the things are wear out. And then these peaks starts getting higher and higher. So, therefore, what we do when we, put that solution in place for a little time, let’s say, couple of days, we needed to kind of, set up, these thresholds. We need to figure out the level of noise that could be because depends very much the capacity, the types of, of a test.

But once you do that, in our solution, we set the thresholds like alarming, a warning alarm, which means that after that point, the maintenance crew, starts looking at, that could be a early indication that a filter bag is not okay until the maximum point that avoids any any nonconformist, issue, which is already a rupture. You really pass the time where this filter, must be replaced.

Shawn Tierney (host): So we’re looking at this chart for those who are listening. And the particle sensor, you know, it’s measuring the particles as air flows normally. But during the pulse, right, we’re forcing a lot of air back in, back down. So we’re getting a lot more, you know, than the average air would have x amount of particles. But if we’re forcing a bunch of it back in, we’re gonna see a lot more particles per, let’s say, hundred millisecond pulse.

Right? So we do expect a peak when we when we pulse it because we’re just forcing a lot of get back go into the reverse direction. So we can we catch the bag loose. But what you’re saying here on this chart, I find so in so much interesting. So you can quantify, like, the expected increase in, in dust that you’re gonna sense with the sensor when you go in the reverse, when you pulse pulse, blow the ear downwards to, to shake the bag free.

But you’re saying if that if that extra increased amount of detected dust is either too high, above normal, or too low below normal, then that tells you that you you could either have a clogged bag or you could have a burst bag. Is that am I understanding that correctly?

Eugenio Silva (Emerson): Yes. Is this correct? And then the interesting thing is that as soon as you’re getting closer to replace a filter back, this baseline starts raising a bit with a kind of, how can I say, there is a drift? Why? Exactly what you said.

A filter is completely clogged. It’s not yet any rupture, but is the efficiency of the cleaning is not so okay. So therefore, this slightly changes needs to be analyzed. Why I’m showing row one to row 10? Exactly in the picture, if you remember, a compartment filter with several, let’s say, filter bags, they are under the row.

So under the row one, you may have 10 filter bags, row two, row three, and so on. So that means you are able to indicate which row is the problem, but it might be that you still need to check further which of the filters in that particular row have the problems. The more quick this peak happens, more number of, filter bags can have a problem.

Shawn Tierney (host): Mhmm.

Eugenio Silva (Emerson): Okay?

Shawn Tierney (host): So you have one sensor on the exhaust, and you’re sequencing through, you know, blowing out or shaking out, you know, pulsing each of the rows. So that’s why we see, you know, one reading across the, you know, across the horizontal, and we see your row, row one, row two, row three, row four, each of them with discrete values or pulses. And like you just said, if you have multiple issues on a row, then you’re going to see, you know, a higher or lower peak depending on what the issue is. I’m with you.

Eugenio Silva (Emerson): Yes. That’s why I’m going to show the other diagnostic capabilities that we needed to associate with this, particle sensor. And just to remember that, this particle sensor, we simply use one unit on the outlet part. That’s why I needed to make the sequence in serialization of the post because then I need to to synchronize with the post jets of every role.

Shawn Tierney (host): Mhmm.

Eugenio Silva (Emerson): No? Row by row.

Shawn Tierney (host): And I think too, if you tried to do them all at once, the the you would need a lot higher pressure. So it it kinda makes sense to do it row by row because it reduces your maximum pressure required.

Eugenio Silva (Emerson): Yeah. In this practical sense, we’re not be able to

Shawn Tierney (host): Differentiate.

Eugenio Silva (Emerson): Identify which of the roles, would be the problem. That’s why we kind of still have to do that. But now let’s give in a solution overview, and I think that, some of the key capabilities and features are going to highlight even more, the other, diagnostic capabilities that we are able to to provide in order to identify correctly and early as possible such issues. So this is a typical dust collector system. And if you look at around, if this dust collector system is just, let’s say, automated with nomadic electric components and they don’t have real time monitoring, you’re not really know the emission level.

If it also this is not real time monitoring with some diagnostics, then you are not able to identify when this particle sensor, for example, is completely taken by, the dust because the humidity entrance in that, in that pipe, or it might be that, it’s so dirty, your dust that, is already ingrained so much on the probe. Mhmm. So that’s why the poor, reliability or the low level sensitivity of that could be affected. And if you were not monitoring, these signals that I showed the these peaks synchronized with the post valve jets Mhmm. You don’t have any early warning.

Okay? The post valves basically are coils. They are solenoid coils

Shawn Tierney (host): Mhmm.

Eugenio Silva (Emerson): With tag diaphragms that open and close at the speed of a hundred milliseconds. The point is that their life time is about a couple of millions of cycles. Mhmm. But imagine, in some cases, one, two years is already enough to to have end end of life. So a fault valve, has to be connected to a control system because you need to know if this is a short circuit or if the diaphragm is completely open.

And you can only do that if every time that you cycle the valve, you also, check that. For example, the power that, you drive the coil gives you a feeling if that is a coil that is already gone. Okay? Now let’s talk about the compressed air. Right?

If you have a a filter that is open, there’s a rupture. If you have, a diaphragm that’s completely gone open, you start consuming higher and higher the compressed air. The point is this is continuously increasing. You can just imagine that this is normal. But if you go into average and look at this in a historical way, you’re gonna see that this trend is caused because of the broken post valves, for example.

So that’s why it’s also important aspect of the automation solution is to minimize the usage of the compressed air is to have a clearly operating under a baseline that is normal. The filter bags, independent of the materials, because if you talk about life sciences, foods, chemical, or metal, they have a different materials. They have a different, where else, lifetime span. The point is the costs might be the filter itself is not so expensive. But going up there, exchange stopping, moving things around, getting the dust out before you change, putting all the personal protection equipment may take hours.

So, therefore, that is the cost of that. And if you’re not able to prevent or even have an early warning when that is going to occur, is gonna be a reactive, maintenance issue. Right? So that’s why just convincing that, it’s worth looking into different aspects. And that’s why, on the left side, when we talk about solutions, we talk about, the connectivity part that, we have to work with devices that are hard or four to 20 milliamps.

Some of devices are modbus to CP. Newer actuators in post faults could be mu m q t t or even OPC UA. That’s the the PLC part that, we have. And we can work with pneumatic systems, for example, that they turn at AP, PROFINET, or any other, standards. Then, of course, we have the IOs, that, we have to look at to control the post jet systems, but also to monitor the differential pressures, to measure the compressed here in some cases, until the parts where at the top, we put HMI SCADA software platform that, we pre engineered, in order to to make it simpler the development, of that solution by our OABS or many cases directly to our end users.

And all in the right are the elements that we offer in our portfolio. Some cases, OEMs of a dust collector systems just to take from us, and they might be that they have their own solution as well.

Shawn Tierney (host): So just for the audio audience, I know we’ve covered these products a lot, especially on the news show. But, I mean, I’m just wanna kinda go through a couple of these things. You got the ASCO product line. Right? So remote piloted valves and, you know, all of those, that category, you know, the, pulse valves.

But we also got the Advantex, which we’ve talked about, like figure filter regulators and, different cylinders. Topworks, which I think we’re all familiar with, proximity sensors and whatnot. And, some of the other products you guys, Rosemount, differential pressure transmitters. We also see, we have, the PAC systems. In this case, you could have edge analytics, and so you may have one of the PAC systems, edge IPCs.

And we even see the, down in the corner there, the Emerson PLC and IOs, which I think we’re all familiar with as well. So that kinda shows you how, you know, this solution, you know, they’re taking all these different products they have in their catalog and putting it together in one solution, which is, you know, you kinda need all this stuff. You know, basically understanding how it works. We just went through it. And so it’s interesting.

I don’t think I’ve seen a slide yet from Emerson where they kinda include in one application all, if not all, many of their their, different product lines. And then, the the skate on the top, it looks like, just some beautiful screens and charts and and, you know, dials showing the current status. So, and and I I didn’t mean to interrupt you, Gino, but nonetheless say that, especially since the people listening, they’ll be familiar with all those trade names because we’ve covered those in the past. But, in any case, let me turn it back to you.

Eugenio Silva (Emerson): No. No. It’s thanks for highlighting. And I I say that, when I introduce myself that I’m from the discrete automation part of Emerson. Mhmm.

Because most of, people would know Emerson by the Rosemont, for example, pressure, Fisher valves, and then the, you know, the delta v, DCS. Right? This is the discrete automation part, and that’s why probably something new, for everybody here. Thank you very much. So when I look at that in a nutshell, we, of course, have to put the sensory devices, the PLC on top, the HMI scanner.

And, basically, what we provide is real time monitoring of this particulate, emissions. We detect but also locate where the leak is by compartments in rows. You can see on the picture that, on the top of this HMI screen, we have a filter unit with three compartments, compartment one, two, three. And each compartment has these rows on top, which is the number of rows, then the more a number of filter bags that, within each, compartment. So, therefore, just locating which compartment and which row, you have a problem, I can tell you it saves half day of the people, in the maintenance.

We also optimize the push at cleaning. It’s an, patent based algorithm that is completely adaptive, and works not just with the post valves, but, we put, head pressure sensors. And this fluctuation and the differential pressure that we measure from the outlet and inlet allows us, of course, to, increase or decrease the frequency of these push heads, which allows not only to be more efficient, but also minimize compressed air. And then finally, when you talk about solidoids involved diaphragms, these ones we can indicate one by one where they have problems. So, therefore, if you look at down to the other HMI screen, there are two rows on top.

The one that is a solenoid, the one that is a diaphragm, and these vertical bars are the filter bag health. If they are getting closer to red with the high levels, meaning that, their life span is already gone. And if you have, light indicators on the solenoid, the diaphragm depend of the color might be that you have a short circuit fail, open diaphragm. Therefore, you have also to replace. And, basically, when we install that solution, sometimes our customers, ask it to also integrate with their control systems.

So, therefore, they compress their generation, the fan, the hoppers, the safety alarms, of the plant sometimes are fully integrated as well. Now let’s talk very much about few features features because these are the ones that probably you haven’t seen yet. Wanna talk about our HMI control system is based on Movicon, Movicon next platform. And, basically, it provides everything that you know from the Scott HMI. And that’s why to use this in general for applications like OIE, energy management, in some others, infrastructure monitoring, like, smart cities, wastewater facilities, solar, mega mega plants, etcetera.

Of course, it provides data visualization, but, I like to highlight that, you could ask we provide connectivity to all major POCs that you can imagine, with communication drivers. Of course, the open standards like OPC UA, like, Modbus. And on the lower part, the the green, let’s say, the the gray part here is what we used for that solution. Sometimes we use a geo maps, to indicate where the filters are. Some geo references, let’s say geo fences as well.

The people have to be, with a personal protection equipment to be there. So there are some, real time, data that, of course, we are collecting for the particle emissions and other elements like differential pressure, header pressure. And then you have the headlines. You can see some screens that are completely dedicated to alarms and alerts. And one of these, diagnostics that you see are related to the solenoid, to the filter bag, and to the diaphragm diagnostics.

A lot of them are diagnostic get diagnosed in different ways. For example, the solenoids, we look into the power output of our IO cards to see if the valve post the solenoid is open or complete short circuit. The filter bag, I already explained it. We detect with some logic with the the particle sensors, And the diaphragm diagnostics is based on the header pressure because if it’s this diaphragm is completely open, the differential pressure within the chamber, it starts fluctuating, and then you know that there’s something wrong there. But all of them increases the filtration efficiency, changes from reactive to predictive maintenance, of course, keeps the site compliant, minimize dust emissions, and for sure increase equipment lifetime, like the filter units, and reduce the compressed air usage.

If you sum up all of that, the return in investment is it might be quite fast, of course, for large big large installations might be within two years, but it’s still a very fast return in investment for that particular solution. That’s what it looks like. A little bit, let’s say, zoom in. You see that they’re not nice looking, but they indicate graphically where the issues are, the number of issues, on this screen about thresholds alerts. The second one on the right side, is like the number of cycles.

Imagine that every pulse valve would have, about a couple of millions of cycles of lifetime. Here, you can at least predict when or how many spare parts that, you need to have in the next quarter. And then, the yellow or red signals means that, red gone, you have is a faulty. And the white ones or the red the yellow ones are the ones that, you need to watch because they’re getting closer to the lifetime dead of lifetime. The other aspect is, like I said, when thus collector systems, you acquire that without the solution, it comes with this sequence box, which basically is a time based posting.

So it keeps posting three to six minutes, like I I said, hundred milliseconds, but it can change. It’s it’s fixed. And that means that leads to, an excessive use of the post valve. So you’re going to wear out quite sooner than it should, but also reduce the valve back life because stretching the the the back filters, of course, you’re gonna also wear out, and you waste much more compressed air than than probably you should. That’s why we implemented this other two types of a post jet cleaning methodologies.

One is on demand. That really depends on the high differential pressure between the the chamber and, you can set, in the in the solution how these multiple filter lines are going to operate normally, And this differential pressure threshold can be, for example, when the efficiency is getting bad, the differential pressure gets lower. And then if that is within a certain band, you can estimate that, there is accumulation of the cascade. The other one is very, intelligent. It’s a function block, in our PLC that, does a dynamic change.

So, therefore, you put the single set point and the adaptive algorithm based on the virtual pressure starts controlling the intervals between the posts. So the idea is that to optimize by eliminating unnecessary posts in the cycle of these valves and also minimizing the compressed air. Of course, when you install the solution and, you put the set point for the first time, the system needs a little bit time to learn, and it’s a learning algorithm that, starts adapting. And very soon, it starts performing optimally. Okay?

Shawn Tierney (host): Hey, everybody. I just wanna jump in here one more time. Just thank our members, both on YouTube and at the automationblog.com. I got some really exciting stuff coming up for you guys, in the fall. I’m I just have this huge plan that I’m working on.

And so, I really just thank you guys for being members. Don’t forget, you get access to Discord. Don’t forget, there’s a whole library of older episodes you get to watch. It’s such just what I’m doing this month for members. It’s, you get a whole library of stuff.

We did so much member only content over the last couple of years that you have hundreds literally hundreds of hours of content that you and only you get access to as a member, whether you’re on YouTube or you’re at theautomationblog.com. And, of course, if you have any questions about your membership, reach out to me directly, please. And with that, let’s go ahead and jump back into this week’s show.

Eugenio Silva (Emerson): And that looks like that. This is just another, possibility to see. You see that, on the left side, you see a particular rows, and each of these rows have the filter bags. Each filter bag has a vertical bar that indicates the healthy of that solenoid diaphragm is on the top. And then, each of these compartments can navigate from one to another.

Then you have other additional elements like the header pressure, differential pressure, particle density, and you have a trained diagram that, you are able also to generate reports, but you also also to to monitor, in order to to type a little bit, the parameters in order to be more efficient. And then, completely right side, if you have more than one dust collector, you can create different screens if you want. But the idea here is that the C1, C2 means compartment one, two, three. Again, a diagnostics that leads to preventative predictive maintenance and avoids completely reactive maintenance. Interesting, if you don’t know, in order to replace a single filter, in order to check if a solenoid valve is completely short circuits, In order to see if, a diaphragm valve is open, you needed to get there in this personal protection equipment using mask, gloves.

You need to go up. You need to kind of get to know where these things are. And imagine that if you could avoid and just look at the screen and say, hey. I know that this is the compartment one of the filter a, and I know where I needed to look at. And by the way, I have the spare part because I had early indications to fix it.

So then we are not just talk about reduction time, but, I guess, reduction costs and avoid to put people every time in such a very interesting environment. Okay? I’m not going through the the right part because you can imagine that this is a description of how things are usually done. And if you turn this around into a proactive predictive maintenance, then you have less and maybe faster steps. And you can prevent and can plan in advance when you wanna go with these, units, and you have to wear this equipment for protection.

So very quickly in the developer position. Of course, like any solution, customers are interested to know if, they can pay off payback very quickly. So the return investment of that. So that’s why we check, the size, the number of, units, what’s the minimum size the customer could start with, because the it’s a pre engineered solution, how fast it could be that we implement in the whole site. It could be also, of course, calculate how much their current expenditure in terms of maintenance, reactive maintenance, the cost of utilities like compressed air, how many times they have to or they have downtime issues.

And from that, we can prove very quickly, very simply that, it’s worth investing in automation. 20 to 30% of our reduction is a lot if you consider that they use a huge amount of compressed air. And compressors, they use electricity. So, therefore, if you’re able to reduce compressed air, you also increase your operation efficiency because cost of utilities is one of the points. Downtime is everything.

Maintenance, it’s about preventing that you need to do these manual inspections. Just go there, check, and come back, and you see that, okay, we could wait for another week. But because I’m here, I’m going to change anyhow the filter. And that, of course, you’re not, increasing the lifetime of our equipment. And interesting that some downstream equipment, like the blowers, like the vacu pumps, if they get a lot of dust or excessive dust, they also, damage them.

So therefore, maximizing maintenance, optimizing every step pays off in that sense. And finally, of course, customers do that because they want the full compliance. Every possible issue can be tracked, can be report. The efficiency of the systems can be audit ready, reports. It can re really prove that you can you are reducing part commissions.

You provide a lot of visibility what’s going on. So, therefore, the technical teams are in very high confidence to operate the system. Because if without, they are operating blindly, And that’s why they feel a bit concerned many times that, might be that the bad things are just going to happen. In a nutshell, we talk about savings, extending the filter life. We talk about savings, reduce the compressed air.

We can avoid downtime. Each downtime is one event that costs not only in the maintenance part here, but also the whole production costs that are not calculate here. And half the penalties that, if you have a single issue, it’s gonna be a big one. So, therefore, it’s a good way to give customers an idea why they should invest the CapEx parts and how we can help with the OPEX to save, their budgets in the sense of operating dust collector systems. So, Shawn, if I have time three minutes, I’m going to run this HMI demo because then you can see on the screen how the different screens are operated, but it’s up to you if I if I if if I need to do that.

Shawn Tierney (host): Yeah. Go ahead.

Eugenio Silva (Emerson): Okay. So this is an HMI demo, of course, simulated here because imagine it’s not possible to connect to live or to have all this whole equipment. So then I’m going to click here. So, basically, you see how a operator would navigate the type of information that, is provided. I made this click through very quickly because then we don’t owe too too much time here.

But you see that, you are able to trend the particle density, the air consumption. You can set the alarms. You can indicate which boost valve is not okay. How is the level of filter bags? And now the settings.

The cleaning, these are the parameters that you can adjust. Like I said, we have an adaptive learning algorithm, but in many cases, you needed to steer at least set up, the sensors as well, how sensible sensitivity of that. There are many different thresholds. And then the diagnostic part, for the diaphragm and the rupture where you can detect. And once this is done, you can see that, you have, quite, interesting information.

For example, if you change, you devolve, you reset the counter. These are the alarms that you can acknowledge, etcetera. Okay? And, that’s it. That was the case.

Shawn Tierney (host): Yeah. That gives you a good idea of what you’re getting with as far as the HMI is concerned, and, it’s good to see a full screen. I mean, it looks it looks like a very well designed HMI. From my perspective, it looks like it’s really giving you it’s focusing in on any errors. So you have, like, just standard graphics, a very good looking graphics, and then if there’s an error, you see it in red or yellow, really calls the eye to it.

But, Eugeno, I see that, there’s a QR code on the screen right now. Can you tell people where that goes?

Eugenio Silva (Emerson): Yes. It goes to the product page on our Emerson.com site. And from there, you can request for demo. We can request for proposal. We can request for more information.

So this is the entry point for you to go to know, how it how we provide that solution, which kind of, basic elements. And there, we have also the related product pages if you wanna get, get to know more.

Shawn Tierney (host): And I think the important part here is a lot of times you you, you know, when when you have a dust collector system that is that is constantly needing care, right, to keep you in compliance and make sure your products are products are being made correctly and you’re keeping people safe and all of that, You know, these systems, you’re gonna they’re they’re gonna be expensive. And, you know, larger systems, of course, are gonna be expensive. And so that cost savings, it’s like energy savings we do with VFDs on pumps and fans. Right? Or energy savings we do when we’re doing lighting, the folks over at Emerson are gonna wanna help you kinda quantify that because, you know, they know that for you to be able to justify not only, hey.

This has given us a lot of problems. We know it’s costing us money. You also wanna know your ROI. Right? And so they’re gonna work with you on that because that’s on these big projects, those are those are some of the things that we have to look at to be able to, you know, to budget correctly.

Anybody who has ever been in the budgeting part of a company knows you just don’t spend money because it’s fun. You know, you have to have a reason beyond everything. So I would I would guess I’m right on that, Eugenio.

Eugenio Silva (Emerson): Yes. And, Shawn, although I just covered the technical part, of course, without any commitment, we can talk to customers and consult them Yeah. To look it around and see, in terms of maturity, how they operate this dust collector systems. We can, of course, check the install base. We have a questionnaire, that can fill it in.

We can understand the size. We can, for example, talk about the energy consumption, the number of, hours that they are spend or active maintenance. And based on that, we give them opportunity to analyze whether they want to invest in that solution, which is a CapEx investment, but, also improve how much reduction they could have on the OPEX part.

Shawn Tierney (host): Yeah. Which is which is, yeah, how they’re gonna justify it. Well, Eugeno, I wanna thank you for going through that. I really enjoyed your presentation. I learned a lot more about about, this product line and actually this product category than I that I knew coming in, and you’re I think you did a great job of walking us through it all.

So thank you very much for coming on the show.

Eugenio Silva (Emerson): Shawn, on behalf of Emerson, we appreciate this opportunity. It’s my first one here, so I also enjoy it, and this was was great. A great conversation, great questions, and, thank you.

Shawn Tierney (host): Well, I hope you enjoyed that episode. I wanna thank Eugene for coming on the show and bringing us up to speed on dust collector systems. I really didn’t know all of those technical details, and I really appreciate him going through that. And it’s cool to see how they integrated so many different Emerson products into that solution. I mean, it’s just not like a PLC into my o.

The sensors, this I mean, you guys, sorry. I’m not gonna go through it again. But in any case, really appreciate that. And I also appreciate our members who made the video addition possible. Thank you, members.

Your $5 a month not only locks this video, but so many other videos that we’ve done, hundreds of videos I’ve done over the last twelve years. So thank you for being a member and supporting my work. I also wanna thank the automationschool.com and the automationblog.com. I hope you guys listened to that update that I included in the show. So many good things happen at both places.

I hope you guys would take a moment to check out both websites. And with that, I just wanna wish you all good health and happiness. And until next time, my friends, peace.

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The Automation Podcast, Episode 241 Show Notes:

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Shawn M Tierney
Technology Enthusiast & Content Creator

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