ISA 100-11 won approval a few weeks before ISAExpo 2009 and on the day before the show a tour of the Arkema chemical plant near Houston (TX US) showed a multi vendor application which was installed just days after the approval and is fully ISA100 compliant.
Companies like Gastronics, Honeywell, Nivis, Wilson Mohr, Wireless Access Solutions (formally Gooch Engineering) and Yokogawa were represented in the hardware and others apparently are to be added shortly.
Parameters covered included temperature, pressure, contact closure, valve positioning, gas detection, corrosion detection, and others. The vision is of a single coherent architecture that is scalable to cover all of these applications, plus many more, with high reliability across the site. The entire site is currently covered by two backbone connections and sensor meshing.This approval gives the go ahead to companies to proceed now with equipment now that the standard is approved and available. Companies like, say, Gastronics, which pioneered the first all-in-one wireless gas monitor in 1999 where the radio is an integral part of the gas monitor. Their True Wireless gas detection system offers the most economical solution for monitoring gases from remote locations. Now they can say to their customers "This is fully complient with the standard!"
Indeed Bud Dungan, Gastronics' President said “The concept of an industrial wireless communication standard with true interoperability and mesh networking capabilities is compelling.... we have high expectations for market uptake of these products.” (Gastronics joined ISA Complience Institute as we reported 28th August on our News Page.)
The best and most succinct comment came from one of the participants in the tour. Gary Mintchel from Automation World tweeted "...ISA100.11a wireless sensor network technology. Guess what? It works."
What else can one say!
Here are some more details of this plant and the participation of other of the companies in pdf format:
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