19SafQB

3.9 IoT For Oil and Gas Industry 197
instantly to the customers’ needs. Furthermore, the allowing the sharing of
opinions of customers can yield a new way of establishing trust between the
retailer and his clients. With these services retailers should be empowered to
gather attractiveness over the electronic retailers.
3.9 IoT For Oil and Gas Industry
Internet of Things is per definition access to information everywhere. For
process automation IoT can be divided into Service Applications, solutions
for the mobile workforce, into wireless Field Devices utilizing different radio
solutions to make information in systems and devices accessible and into
long range wireless communication solutions for the Remote Monitoring of
a process and a plant. In this chapter we present a wireless Field Device
targeting the Oil and Gas environment. Process industry in general and Oil
and Gas in particular put special requirements on field devices. Devices have
to operate under harsh conditions; dirt, often high temperatures and sometimes
in explosion prone environments. It is a challenge to develop a field device
that not only is easy to install and maintain, have a long enough life length but
also withstand this tough environment.
Problem description
Why is the information from installed Field Devices not already available?
Modern process control systems often have the facility to pass HART commands
through the I/O modules so that instrument configuration can be modified
at the host system level. Remote access to HART instruments at the HOST
system has been available for years however because of large number of brown
field installations with a legacy communication architecture it is estimated that
less than 10% of the entire population of Field Devices is connected so that
all the information it provides is made available to the higher level system
(See Figure 3.22) for a picture of a system). To get access to the information
you need to wire in a HART multiplexor which is difficult to do and normally
require a plant shutdown.
Integrated operations
With better connectivity to Field Devices better concepts for safe and costeffective
operations of facilities can be developed which is for both environmental
and business reasons extremely important for the Oil & Gas industry.