Non-dispersive analysis, while newer in discovery than dispersive analysis (Isaac Newton’s 17th-century…
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Instrument technicians should not have to concern themselves over the programming details internal to digital…
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One of the fundamental laws of electric circuits is Kirchhoff’s Current Law, which states the algebraic…
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Thermodynamics is the study of heat, temperature, and their related effects in physical systems. As a subject,…
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In the United States, the most common language used to program PLCs is Ladder Diagram (LD), also known as…
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(Will be addressed in future versions of this book)
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Many traditional flowmeter technologies respond to the volumetric flow rate of the moving fluid.…
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The following photograph shows a large air blower in a wastewater treatment facility equipped with a…
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Programmable logic controllers are essentially nothing more than special-purpose, industrial computers. As…
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Light is known to interact with matter in very specific ways, which may be exploited as a means of measuring…
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When control valves operate between fully open and fully shut, they serve much the same purpose in process…
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In November of 2007 a new computer virus was submitted to a virus scanning service. The purpose of this new…
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A fluid is any substance having the ability to flow: to freely change shape and move under the influence of a…
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In contrast to quantitative tuning procedures where definite numerical values for P, I, and D controller…
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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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The final step in treating wastewater before releasing it into the natural environment is to kill any harmful…
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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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Three-phase AC is the dominant mode of electric power generation and distribution in modern societies.…
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Perhaps the most important rule of controller tuning is to know the process before attempting to adjust the…
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An extremely important topic in engineering is that of transfer functions. Simply defined, a transfer function…
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When control valves operate between fully open and fully shut, they serve much the same purpose in process…
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There are many process control applications in the industry where it is desirable to have multiple control…
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A technological advance introduced in the late 1980’s was HART, an acronym standing for Highway…
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As we have seen, feedforward control is a way to improve the stability of a feedback control system in the…
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As we have seen, the concept of integration is finding the accumulation of one variable multiplied by another…
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“Polyphase” means “many phases,” describing a form of AC electrical system where…
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Process measurements are often of an analog nature: the temperature of a furnace, the rate of fluid flow…
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The vast majority of PID controllers in service today are digital in nature. Microprocessors executing PID…
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Hydrogen ion activity in aqueous (water-solvent) solutions is a very important parameter for a wide variety of…
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RTDs are completely passive sensing elements, requiring the application of an externally-sourced electric…
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The simple PLC ladder diagram (LD) commands consist of contacts and coils, arranged in sequences that mimic…
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A completely different way of measuring liquid level in vessels is to bounce a traveling wave off the surface…
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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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Data-processing modules within FF systems are known as function blocks. Sometimes these blocks serve merely to…
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Although it seems each model of PLC has its own idiosyncratic standard for programming, there does exist an…
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An engineer named Bob Metcalfe conceived the idea of Ethernet in 1973, while working for the Xerox research…
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Programmable logic controllers are essentially nothing more than special-purpose, industrial computers. As…
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“Radio” systems use electromagnetic fields to communicate information over long distances through…
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The transformer is one of the most important components in all of AC circuitry. Principally used to…
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An extremely important topic in engineering is that of transfer functions. Simply defined, a transfer function…
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The term “grid” refers to the conductors and equipment interconnecting power sources to power…
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A whole class of problem-solving techniques focuses on altering the given problem into a simpler form that is…
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Perhaps the most basic and necessary protective relay function is overcurrent: commanding a circuit breaker to…
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Process analyzers measure the concentration of specific substances for the purpose of measuring and/or…
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Measuring the flow rate of liquid through an open channel is not unlike measuring the flow rate of a liquid…
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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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A 4 to 20 mA current signal represents some signal along a 0 to 100 percent scale. Usually, this scale is…
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Disconnect Switches Disconnects are switches designed to isolate sections of a power system in case of damage…
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An important performance parameter for transmitter instruments is something often referred to as turndown or…
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Volumes could be written about poor diagnostic technique. The following mistakes are not intended to comprise…
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Sometimes we encounter a diversity of instrument signal standards in one control system. Such is the case with…
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Layer 1 of the OSI Reference Model is where we define the “physical” elements of a digital data…
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A powerful mathematical concept useful for analyzing practically any physical system – electrical…
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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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A very common form of on/off valve used for pneumatic and hydraulic systems alike is the solenoid valve. A…
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As we have seen, the concept of differentiation is finding the rate-of-change of one variable compared to…
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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 electric motor is often used as a discrete control element in a control system if driving a pump, conveyor…
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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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