Emerson Dust Collector Monitoring & Control Solution (P241)

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Welcome back to the automation podcast. My name
is Sean 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

(00:22):
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

(00:43):
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

(01:04):
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?
Yes. Sean, thank you very much for this
opportunity. Hello, everyone.
Here's Eugenio Silva. I'm a product manager, intelligence

(01:26):
automation
within Amazon, the discrete automation part of Amazon.
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,

(01:48):
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

(02:09):
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

(02:32):
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,

(02:52):
brings us,
full scope how the
operators
look into into that solution when they they
use it.
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.

(03:13):
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.
In terms of key applications,
industries use cases,
dust collector is essential for many industries that
produce
dust, produce

(03:34):
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,

(03:57):
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

(04:19):
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.

(04:41):
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.

(05:03):
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

(05:26):
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.

(05:46):
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,

(06:08):
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

(06:31):
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,

(06:54):
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

(07:15):
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

(07:38):
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

(07:58):
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

(08:19):
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.

(08:42):
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

(09:04):
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,

(09:25):
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,

(09:47):
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,

(10:09):
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,

(10:30):
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,

(10:50):
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

(11:13):
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.
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

(11:35):
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But some of the products we have here,
you're not gonna find in anybody else's training
room, not even the factory's training room because
we cover all different products. Right? So if

(11:58):
you're coming over to do training with us,
you can actually learn Siemens and Allen Bradley
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you know, if you go to a vendor's
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But we have as you remember from the

(12:19):
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(12:40):
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And, yeah, that was a long drive. So
if you want your, students to show up
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(13:01):
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(13:23):
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(13:46):
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(14:07):
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that. So with that said, let's get back
into this week's episode of the automation podcast.
And these are going to be general principles
and basics.
In general, a dust collector system

(14:28):
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

(14:49):
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.

(15:10):
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

(15:32):
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.

(15:53):
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,

(16:14):
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

(16:34):
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

(16:56):
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

(17:17):
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,

(17:38):
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

(17:58):
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

(18:19):
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.

(18:40):
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.

(19:02):
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

(19:22):
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,

(19:44):
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,

(20:05):
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

(20:25):
removed.
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,

(20:47):
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

(21:09):
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.
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

(21:31):
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,

(21:51):
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

(22:12):
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.
Yeah. Especially if you have lots of dust,
you need an automatic way to continue to
clean it and get it off of the

(22:34):
filter and into the bin. So yeah. No.
That makes a lot of sense.
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,

(22:55):
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,

(23:16):
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

(23:37):
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,

(23:58):
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,

(24:19):
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,

(24:40):
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.

(25:01):
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

(25:23):
more tricky than you can imagine because
it looks like this.
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

(25:44):
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,

(26:06):
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

(26:26):
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.

(26:48):
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

(27:08):
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

(27:29):
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,

(27:50):
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
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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. Every time you get,
use the jet boost with the boost valves

(28:10):
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,

(28:31):
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,

(28:52):
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.

(29:13):
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,

(29:33):
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

(29:55):
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.
So
we're looking at this chart for those who
are listening.

(30:16):
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

(30:36):
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

(30:57):
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

(31:18):
have a burst bag. Is that am I
understanding that correctly? 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.

(31:39):
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,

(31:59):
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

(32:20):
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. Mhmm. Okay?
So you have one sensor on the exhaust,
and you're sequencing through, you know, blowing out

(32:42):
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

(33:04):
issue is. I'm with you.
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

(33:25):
to make the sequence
in serialization
of the post
because then I need
to to synchronize
with the post jets of every role.
Mhmm. No? Row by row. 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

(33:45):
maximum pressure required.
Yeah. In this practical sense, we're not be
able to
Differentiate.
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,

(34:07):
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,

(34:29):
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,

(34:51):
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.

(35:11):
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?

(35:35):
The post valves
basically are
coils.
They are solenoid coils Mhmm. 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,

(35:55):
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

(36:16):
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?

(36:36):
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.

(36:57):
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

(37:18):
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.

(37:38):
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,

(37:59):
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

(38:20):
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

(38:42):
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,

(39:03):
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,

(39:25):
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

(39:45):
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.
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

(40:05):
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.

(40:26):
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

(40:46):
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

(41:07):
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

(41:29):
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.
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 Amazon.
Mhmm. Because most of, people would know Amazon
by the Rosemont, for example, pressure,

(41:52):
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,

(42:12):
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,

(42:33):
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,

(42:55):
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

(43:15):
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,

(43:36):
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.

(43:56):
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

(44:18):
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,

(44:41):
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,

(45:02):
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.

(45:24):
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.

(45:45):
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

(46:06):
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

(46:26):
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

(46:47):
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

(47:10):
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,

(47:34):
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

(47:55):
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

(48:17):
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.

(48:40):
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

(49:00):
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,

(49:20):
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

(49:41):
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

(50:01):
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

(50:23):
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,

(50:43):
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

(51:05):
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,

(51:25):
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?
Hey, everybody. I just wanna jump in here

(51:45):
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

(52:06):
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,

(52:27):
reach out to me directly, please. And with
that, let's go ahead and jump back into
this week's show.
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

(52:49):
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

(53:09):
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,

(53:30):
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

(53:50):
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.

(54:11):
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

(54:32):
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

(54:54):
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

(55:16):
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

(55:37):
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

(55:58):
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

(56:21):
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.

(56:42):
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

(57:04):
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

(57:24):
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,

(57:46):
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

(58:07):
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,

(58:28):
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.

(58:49):
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

(59:10):
in the sense of
operating dust collector
systems.
So,
Sean, 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

(59:30):
I if if I need to do that.
Yeah. Go ahead.
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

(59:51):
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.

(01:00:12):
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

(01:00:33):
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,

(01:00:53):
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.
Yeah. That gives you a good idea of
what you're getting with as far as the

(01:01:13):
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,

(01:01:35):
Eugeno,
I see that, there's a QR code on
the screen right now. Can you tell people
where that goes?
Yes. It goes to the product page on
our amazon.com
site.
And from there,
you can request for demo. We can request
for proposal. We can request for more information.

(01:01:56):
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.
And I think the important part here is
a lot of times you you, you know,

(01:02:17):
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

(01:02:39):
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

(01:03:00):
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.
Yes. And, Sean, although I just covered the

(01:03:23):
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,

(01:03:44):
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,

(01:04:05):
but, also improve how much reduction they could
have on the OPEX part.
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

(01:04:26):
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.
Sean, 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.
Well, I hope you enjoyed that episode. I
wanna thank Eugene for coming on the show

(01:04:47):
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

(01:05:07):
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

(01:05:29):
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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