Integration of hart and ff h1 devices into distributed control system for feedforward control in revamping existing plants

Abstract

To revamp existing process plants that use Highway Addressable Remote Transducer (HART) communication technology, reusing the existing instruments which are still available in the market to combine with new Foundation Fieldbus (FF) H1 instruments in the same control system can become a cost-effective strategy for digital modernization. This paper aims at presenting an engineering method based on IEC 61804 standard for integrating a HART field device and FF H1 devices into a distributed control system (DCS) to operate together in a feedforward control loop. To verify the performance of the proposed method, the feedforward on temperature control configured and handled on the DeltaV DCS is employed as an illustrative case study. Moreover, how different analog-input (AI) function block assignments to the HART and FF transmitters for measuring the controlled variable and disturbance input as well as how different proportional-integral-derivative (PID) function block allocations to the DCS controller and FF field devices affect the H1 segment macrocycle schedules and network traffic loads is also analyzed. Experimental results obtained from some control configuration schemes demonstrate that the combined HART-FF H1 technique can maintain the controlled variable at the setpoint in the presence of disturbances for feedforward control.