Smooth upgrading of process plants

Hima Paul Hilde­brandt, provider of smart safe­ty solu­tions for indus­tri­al appli­ca­tions, has brought a new pro­gram­ma­ble safe­ty sys­tem onto the mar­ket. The flex­i­ble and scal­able Hi-Quad X is a fur­ther devel­op­ment of the Hi-Quad, which has been secur­ing over ten thou­sand appli­ca­tions world­wide for around 30 years. It fits seam­less­ly into Hima’s Smart Safe­ty Platform.

The Hi-Quad X is not just a flex­i­ble, effi­cient safe­ty sys­tem; it is also an impor­tant com­po­nent in Hima’s new, tech­ni­cal­ly coher­ent Smart Safe­ty Plat­form, which uni­fies all safe­ty sys­tems of the com­pa­ny. Hard­ware and soft­ware are close­ly aligned. Plant oper­a­tors thus receive a scal­able solu­tion which they can use to cov­er the com­plete safe­ty and secu­ri­ty require­ments for small sin­gle appli­ca­tions right through to com­plex archi­tec­tures of large-scale plants in line with requirements.

The Smart Safe­ty Plat­form is based on the use of basic com­po­nents which are iden­ti­cal for all Hima prod­uct fam­i­lies, includ­ing oper­at­ing sys­tem, engi­neer­ing tool and com­mu­ni­ca­tion via Safe Eth­er­net. The fact that plat­form com­po­nents can be com­bined freely means that vir­tu­al­ly every cus­tomer solu­tion can be devel­oped and imple­ment­ed. The holis­tic approach enables com­pa­nies to use a solu­tion from one source, there­by reduc­ing the com­plex­i­ty of their plants considerably.

New performance dimensions, flexible system architecture and integrated intrinsic safety

With the imple­men­ta­tion of the proven plat­form tech­nol­o­gy, the Hi-Quad X reach­es a new per­for­mance dimen­sion. Users thus ben­e­fit from a reduced sys­tem cycle and reac­tion time, par­tic­u­lar­ly for float­ing point cal­cu­la­tions. The increased diag­nos­tic capa­bil­i­ty, which per­mits quick­er defect track­ing dur­ing main­te­nance work, pro­vides addi­tion­al ben­e­fits. On the one hand the more flex­i­ble sys­tem archi­tec­ture enables the time­ly use of redun­dant mod­ules right through to com­plete redun­dan­cy. On the oth­er hand ret­ro­spec­tive adap­ta­tions to the sys­tem for appli­ca­tion pro­grams, hard­ware and com­mu­ni­ca­tion can be under­tak­en — even dur­ing operation.

The Hi-Quad X sys­tem also enables the use of SIL3 mod­ules with inte­grat­ed intrin­sic safe­ty (Ex pro­tec­tion). Users no longer need a sep­a­rate iso­la­tion ampli­fi­er for their intrin­si­cal­ly safe SIL cir­cuits. The ben­e­fits of the diag­nos­tics pro­vid­ed can there­fore be uti­lized up to the field device with­out any loss­es. Oth­er ben­e­fits include the sim­pli­fi­ca­tion of plan­ning, doc­u­men­ta­tion and fur­nish­ing proof of the intrin­sic safe­ty. The fact that flawed plant out­ages due to defec­tive iso­la­tion ampli­fiers are no longer an issue is anoth­er huge bonus. This is made pos­si­ble by the redun­dant con­nec­tion options which always per­mit the exchange of defec­tive sys­tem com­po­nents dur­ing operation.

The Hi-Quad X sys­tem can of course be con­nect­ed with every basic process con­trol sys­tem (BPCS), even on a redun­dant path­way. It then con­tin­ues to run inde­pen­dent­ly even if an error occurs in the BPCS or in the com­mu­ni­ca­tion. The secu­ri­ty mech­a­nisms which are installed assist with this process. They cre­ate a vir­tu­al and also a phys­i­cal sep­a­ra­tion when stan­dard pro­to­cols are used.

Hima cus­tomers who already use Hi-Quad sys­tems ben­e­fit from the upgrade to Hi-Quad X with short plant out­ages and con­sid­er­ably reduced costs when com­pared to new instal­la­tions. The I/O mod­ules includ­ing field wiring can con­tin­ue to be used. This enables users to make sav­ings in terms of invest­ment and costs for test­ing and documentation.