Field Instrumentation is a broad topic that covers all the measurements & monitoring aspects of field parameters involved in industries which act as an important & crucial part of process. The main industrial classified 4 parameters i.e. Pressure, Temperature, Flow and Level are the essential parameters and all the field instrumentation comprises measurement & monitoring of these parameters primarily. Other parameters like Density, Humidity, pH, Analysis, Conductivity, Concentration, Vibration are also measured but are specific to applications/processes and their measurements & handling may or may not require accordingly ; whereas pressure, temperature, flow & level are seem to be most common in nearby all applications/processes , whether it would be a small scale manufacturing unit or bulk production industrial plants.
Field instrumentation are drastically demonstrated by installations & commissioning of certain important and critical line mounted instruments. They generally are control valves , flow meters with meter runs of UL-DL requirement, temperature instruments with thermowells (wake frequency calculation is the phenomena), analyser sampling systems, heaters, thermal insulations, claddings and heat tracing and even many examples are there depending upon different-different nature of process. Field instrumentation comprises of the maximum project execution timeline. All the integrated disciplines that are supposed to work with instruments and controls systems related to those instruments. Many fields are corrosive in nature due to natural location of that particular area. Some fields are highly explosive and necessary safety and hazard instrumentation studies and compliance are to be done. Life of instruments strongly depends on the geographical conditions of field. For example, a control valve which is designed & manufactured to work in a oil refinery which is land based application, will not withstand the environmental conditions of an off-shore platform where the air is salty and highly corrosive. Similarly, a safe area junction box/panel with under air conditioning facility will not be selected for usage in a hazardous & dust certified area. Hence, when we say field, it typically means the actual area where the process is being carried out. This process may demand for safety instruments, hazardous area certified instruments, corrosion protection coated instruments and even instruments for sub-zero temperatures.
Field demonstrates with all the necessary instruments mounted , sensing & capillary lines hooked-up, pipe racks and cable trays laid, bulk mechanical setups done especially to be named are- reactors, cracker units, ID-FD fans, boilers, cooling towers, analyser shelters, steam generators, boiler drum, heavy transfer fluid lines, compressors units, turbine generators and many more. Instruments are installed and commissioned after civil constructions & mechanical installations are done primarily. Based on this, instruments are pre-designed and in some cases later are even re-designed in terms of installation, commissioning and for maintenance purposes. For these integrated approach of field design, in big projects, modelling of entire process plant is carried out and 3D graphical models are generated. All the pipe racks, cable trays, junction boxes, instrument panels, electrical panels, mechanical equipments, civil structures are majorly shown. These models are reviewed and finalized by instrumentation , mechanical, civil and electrical engineers. This way of field analysis in terms of entire process plant erection, installation and maintenance approach is a milestone activity before the successful pre-commissioning & commissioning of the process.
Please refer articles on Pressure, Temperature, Flow and Level. These articles shall provide the introductory overview about the governing industrial parameters. Also, please refer “training topics” section on this website and I would like to recommend you all to kindly enroll for those trainings sessions in order to get complete information about field instruments used for measurement of these parameters.
Hope the above article might be helpful to you for getting brief & overview information about field and instrumentation understanding towards it. For additional more specific technical information on this topic and sub-topics related & relevant to it, please feel free to write us at [email protected] .Your all doubts & queries will be answered. Also, necessary articles or even training sessions can be arranged & provided for the same, if required by you.
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