A unique form of technical diagram for describing the abstract functions comprising a control system (e.g. PID…
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Displacer level instruments exploit Archimedes’ Principle to detect liquid level by continuously…
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Two extremely important principles in electric circuits were codified by Gustav Robert Kirchhoff in the year…
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Valves can experience a number of problems, most of them either preventable or repairable. These problems can…
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Recall that an exothermic chemical reaction is one that releases a net sum of energy, as opposed to an…
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Imagine a liquid-level control system for a vessel, where the position of a level-sensing float directly sets…
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Instrument technicians should not have to concern themselves over the programming details internal to digital…
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To show a practical process example, let’s examine three diagrams for a compressor control system,…
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A level switch is one detecting the level of liquid or solid (granules or powder) in a vessel. Level switches…
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A bridge circuit is basically a pair of voltage dividers where the circuit output is taken as the difference…
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Every flow-measuring instrument exploits a physical principle to measure the flow rate of fluid stream.…
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Many traditional flowmeter technologies respond to the volumetric flow rate of the moving fluid.…
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An electric motor is often used as a discrete control element in a control system if driving a pump, conveyor…
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Phasors are to AC circuit quantities as polarity is to DC circuit quantities: a way to express the…
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Most pneumatic instruments use a simple but highly sensitive mechanism for converting mechanical motion into…
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One of the most common, and most useful, pressure measuring instruments in industry is the differential…
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A quantitative PID tuning procedure is a step-by-step approach leading directly to a set of numerical values…
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Pipe is a hollow structure designed to provide an enclosed pathway for fluids to flow, usually manufactured…
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Regulating the electric power sent to an electric motor is a task performed by high-speed switching…
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While the term “probability” may evoke images of imprecision, probability is in fact an exact…
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Circuit breakers used in residential, commercial, and light industrial service are self-tripping devices: they…
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A number of different sensors used in instrumentation generate DC voltage signals proportional to the process…
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Every programmable logic controller must have some means of receiving and interpreting signals from real-world…
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A wise PLC programmer once told me that the first thing any aspiring programmer should learn about the PLC…
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RTDs are completely passive sensing elements, requiring the application of an externally-sourced electric…
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Solids tend to expand when heated. The amount that a solid sample will expand with increased temperature…
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While 50 and 51 (instantaneous and time overcurrent) relay functions monitor line current magnitude and guard…
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Multiple accessories exist for pressure-sensing devices to function optimally in challenging process…
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Programmable logic controllers are essentially nothing more than special-purpose, industrial computers. As…
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As previously defined, calibration refers to the checking and adjustment of an instrument so that its output…
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A pneumatic controller receives a process variable (PV) signal as a variable air pressure, compares that…
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Regardless of valve type, all stem-actuated control valves require some form of seal allowing motion of the…
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Most people reading this book have likely had the experience of adjusting water temperature using two hand…
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A form of protection against faults on long-distance power lines is called distance relaying, so named because…
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A pressure switch is one detecting the presence of fluid pressure. Pressure switches often use diaphragms or…
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In some process applications, it is important that the control valve be able to completely stop fluid flow…
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The Law of Continuity for fluids states that the product of mass density (\(\rho\)), cross-sectional pipe area…
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An important design parameter of a control valve is the position it will “fail” to if it loses…
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An electromechanical relay is an electrical switch actuated by an electromagnet coil. As switching devices,…
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Perhaps the most confusing aspect of discrete sensors is the definition of a sensor’s normal status.…
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Lipták, Béla G. et al., Instrument Engineers’ Handbook – Process Measurement and Analysis Volume I,…
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The vast majority of PID controllers in service today are digital in nature. Microprocessors executing PID…
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Valve actuators provide force to move control valve trim. For precise positioning of a control valve, there…
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A pneumatic controller receives a process variable (PV) signal as a variable air pressure, compares that…
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The following animation shows a rotating phasor in three-dimensional form. The phasor rotates in a complex…
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A damper (otherwise known as a louvre) is a multi-element flow control device generally used to throttle large…
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A technological advance introduced in the late 1980’s was HART, an acronym standing for Highway…
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The efficient identification and correction of instrument calibration errors is an important function for…
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Some of the simplest types of digital communication networks found in industry are defined by the EIA…
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Up until this point, we have explored various types of instrumentation diagram, each one making reference to…
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Area refers to the size of two-dimensional surface. Volume refers to the size of a three-dimensional space. To…
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Those familiar with industrial instrumentation will find much within the electric power industry remarkably…
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Many liquid substances undergo a process whereby their constituent molecules split into positively and…
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At the next OSI Reference Model layer (layer 4) is a set of protocols specifying how reliable communication…
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In contrast to quantitative tuning procedures where definite numerical values for P, I, and D controller…
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DC electric motors generate torque by a reaction between two magnetic fields: one field established by…
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Instrument technicians should not have to concern themselves over the programming details internal to digital…
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To better understand the design and operation of self-balancing pneumatic mechanisms, it is helpful to examine…
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A great many chemical composition measurements may be made indirectly by means of electricity, if those…
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Displacer level instruments exploit Archimedes’ Principle to detect liquid level by continuously…
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