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ISA Expo 2008, held in Houston, October 14-16, provided an opportunity to create awareness of the enhancements made to the EDDL standard, the new capabilities products gain as a result of these enhancements, and the results plants get from these capabilities, such as integrated diagnostics.
ISA104, which is the ISA committee dedicated to develop the EDDL standard, used its booth located in the �Bus Station� area of the exhibition hall to show visitors the capabilities of EDDL, such as for device commissioning, calibration, diagnostics and troubleshooting.
Devices demonstrated included a mix of products communicating using HART, Foundation fieldbus, Profibus, and WirelessHART protocols. Many of the systems support several of these protocols simultaneously. EDDL permits this mix of devices using different protocols to be managed from the same single software.
Temperature and pressure transmitters were provided by Emerson, Endress+Hauser, and Siemens. More complex devices included radar level transmitters from Emerson and Siemens, as well as control valves with positioners from Emerson, Foxboro, Masoneilan, Metso, and Siemens. A variable speed drive was provided by Siemens, and a fieldbus diagnostics module by MTL.
According to ISA04 member Jonas Berge, who manned the booth, “Many visitors stopped by the ISA104 stand because they wondered what the great mix of systems, devices, and protocols was all about. This was the major achievement – to show so many control systems and valve positioners supporting the enhancements to EDDL technology.”
