DEMO APPLICATION TO SHOW ADVANCED CAPABILITIES OF HSE/FFB TECHNOLOGY
06 January 2005 - Fieldbus Foundation

The FFB demonstration team expects to begin the Factory Acceptance Test for the FOUNDATION fieldbus system by February 2005, with final demo staging to be completed shortly thereafter. There will be a live demonstration of the combined HSE/FFB architecture on May 19, 2005, in Lima, Ohio. Corporate executives and engineering managers from participating Fieldbus Foundation member companies, along with foundation staff, will attend the event and interface with trade press representatives.

Developed specifically for the FOUNDATION fieldbus HSE (100 Mbit/s) technology program, but also compatible with H1 (31.25 kbit/s) fieldbus systems, FFBs are a key component of the open, integrated FOUNDATION fieldbus architecture for plantwide information integration. FFBs, which are application-specific, reside at the fieldbus User Layer along with standard function blocks and enable control strategies such as supervisory data acquisition, batch control, Programmable Logic Controller sequencing, burner management, coordinated drive control and Input/Output interfacing, including gateways to other plant device networks.

The new, world-scale Lima BDO plant, which began operation in 2000, marks BP's entry into the worldwide BDO market. As part of the FFB demonstration, BP will install a FOUNDATION fieldbus system consisting of H1 field devices and HSE linking devices on a vapor system. The fieldbus controls will actuate a series of butterfly valves used on the process.

According to John Rezabek, lead controls engineer for the Lima facility, BP has a long-standing commitment to the development of HSE technology. He said, 'The FFB demonstration will show our company, and other end users worldwide, that automated and process control plants can move beyond outdated legacy systems in favor of a distributed fieldbus architecture enabling robust, reliable control at the field level.'

Rezabek indicated that the demo application will highlight FFB implementation of host-resident logic utilizing both discrete and analog field devices residing on H1, the co-existence of diverse control systems from various manufacturers using HSE, and the interoperability of alternate HSE linking devices and associated controllers. In addition, the demo will show the suitability of existing FOUNDATION fieldbus devices for high-speed batching and sequencing of discrete systems, as well as the use of FFBs in discrete and hybrid applications.

The Fieldbus Foundation's director of technology development, David A. Glanzer, said FFBs allow end users to replace many of their existing, incompatible sensor buses with an open fieldbus architecture, and in doing so, achieve plantwide distributed control and seamless, enterprise-wide information integration through a common function block model.

'With the introduction of the FFB and the previously-released HSE technology, FOUNDATION fieldbus now covers the entire application range from basic process control to complex hybrid/batch control,' said Glanzer. 'This will decrease the number of different automation systems that need to be supported in the plant, and will reduce the network hierarchy to a manageable level.'

Glanzer added, 'The use of FFBs also enhances the ability to move control functionality to the field-level. For example, with FFBs running in a linking device, a single physical device can support batch and logic control. With this approach, users can often eliminate the need for proprietary unit controllers.'

Two types of FFBs, pre-configured and fully-configured versions, are now available. Specifications for the pre-configured FFBs were released by the Fieldbus Foundation in March 2000. Specifications for the fully-configured FFBs were released in September 2001 after completion of field tests at the Lee College Fieldbus Center in Baytown, Texas, USA.

Pre-configured FFBs have a predefined number/type of I/O parameters like standard function blocks, but the algorithm is configurable. Since the I/O is predefined, the Device Description is also predefined. The initial FFBs of this type, Multiple Input/Output (MIO) blocks, have eight analog or discrete parameters per block: MAI, MAO, MDI, MDO. MIO blocks are used for remote I/O interfacing and simple gateway applications.

Fully-configured FFBs are used for more complex applications; they allow both the number/type of I/O parameters and the algorithm to be configured. In this case, the DD is generated 'on the fly' by the configuration tool.

FFBs are created using programming tools based on standards such as IEC 61131-3. Once created, FFBs are instantiated and connected to other blocks just like standard function blocks.

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