By Industrial control is an electronic control system based on electronic & electromechanically associated instruments used for industrial process control. In simple words, minimum human effort is require to control a large facility. The size of the industrial control system depends on the number of inputs and outputs needed to control the process. If a high number of outcomes is required, then a more significant number of modular panel controllers are need. Which are all connected to the central primary control system. The GE industrial controls system combines hardware and software to follow different protocols to control critical infrastructure production facilities.
Industrial control includes SCADA (supervisory control and data acquisition), PLCs (programmable logic controllers), PACs (programmable automation controllers), IACS (industrial automation and control systems), and IPC (Industrial process control), control panel cards and IEDs (intelligent electronic devices), etc. Most manufacturing machines, power plants, and others now use industrial control systems for better operation and lower cost of maintenance.
To fullfill the industrial automation requirement, many hardware and software automation brands are available in the market, some of them are Siemens, Honeywell, B&R, Yaskawa, invent, delta GE, Fanuc, Panasonic, Baumer, and bamular etc.
What are the types of industrial control system?
Two types of industrial control systems are used in automation which are open loop and closed loop.
In an open loop system, there is no feedback from the process plant. In other words, the information or parameter from the plant is not feedback to the controller from the processing output. A good example is the fan dimmer at our houses and the timer controlling heating of the room.
In-close loop system, the control action depends upon the feedback from the process plant. In other words, the controller decides the input coming from the plant .for example, controlled room heating by thermocouple feedback or thermostat, and the servo motor speed controller takes the feedback speed of the motor from the encoder. In a closed loop system, there are many control techniques, i.e., Discrete controller, PID controller, sequential controller, and digital controller.
What are the major examples of industrial controls?
Different types of industries use different types of industrial controls hardware and software. Nowadays, many pieces of equipments used for better control depend upon the application. For example, in a powerhouse, PLC is use as a controller to control turbine parameters and restrict the turbine movement to a required speed. The torque and feedback system continues to give data from the turbine to PLC to decide.PLC parameter set points can set from the HMI (Human machine interface) except the factory set tripping point, for example, max speed of the turbine, max oil temperature, different bearing tripping temperatures, and vibration.
The other parameter can be set from HMI to run the power plant as per requirement. Now day days, PCB technology is also growing, and there is competition between PLCs and control cards. The control card is design for dedicate function and cannot be use for another process, for example, turbine GE control cards MK Verge EX 2100e, MK V LM, GE EX 2000, GE MK VI, etc. In molding machine different types of PCB used FML738HZB , FCF4 94v and CPU-55 JCB97813 etc.
In petrochemical industries, which are the example of industrial controls, the Delta V process controller controls the petrochemical process, a product of Emerson Electric. Delta V is Emerson’s digital automation system and is use to enhance plant process capability by harnessing today’s predictive technology. In short, every industry uses industrial control system for better control and to take the maximum output from plant/equipment.
