Insights of the Week
A webinar on IIoT for water and wastewater plants is scheduled for 10:00 AM on
Thursday, April 3, 2017. You can participate as instructed in
Weekly IIoT Webinars.
The potential revenues from IIoW (Wisdom) are greater than from IIoT. IIoW will
make possible faster adoption of new and better products. With an IIoW advantage
the suppliers of the better products will be big winners. McIlvaine is providing
some paths toward better products with specific IIoW initiatives. One is the
High Performance Valves and IIoT.
Collaboration among suppliers is the way that smaller companies can leverage
IIoW in the international markets. Companies with complimentary products can
share promotional expenses and develop an international sales network of their
choosing and not rely on the local representative structure that now exists.
They can also share the task of developing the IIoW for specific industries and
applications.
For example a supplier of sugar centrifuges can collaborate with a pump and a
valve manufacturer to fully investigate the opportunities in the sugar industry
in Chile. The sugar mill key decision makers in Chile are to a large extent
active in LinkedIn. They can be contacted by the collaborating companies who
through webinars can demonstrate their IIoW. McIlvaine has initiatives in this
area with the
4 Lane Knowledge Bridge to the End User
and
Detailed Forecasting of Markets, Prospects and Projects
IIoT is a $30 Billion Potential for Air Pollution Suppliers
The elimination of operating personnel at the plant, automation revenues and
expansion of services will provide an opportunity for air pollution equipment
and component suppliers which will exceed $30 billion per year by 2026. This is
the prediction of the McIlvaine Company in
Industrial IOT and Remote O&M
and the subject of a free webinar Thursday, April 13 at 10:00 AM
Weekly IIoT Webinars.
Fifty percent of the revenue potential is from increased purchases. The other
fifty percent is from purchases that will be delivered through the IIoT route
rather than through traditional routes. Filter bags, valves, fans, conveyors,
continuous emissions monitoring systems and reagent delivery will be monitored
and serviced through the IIoT ecosystem.
In the new IIoT environment the fan and valve suppliers will be viewing
health data on their products through the cloud.
The APC system supplier has the opportunity to become the BOO (build,
own, operate) supplier of these systems or he can abdicate and let a digital
process management company such as Accenture, the plant supplier such as GE, the
consulting company such as AECOM, or end user based enterprises take the lead.
The air pollution system of the future will be operated and maintenance
scheduled through remote monitoring and control.
There will be a BOO supplier who remotely monitors all components in the
system. However, this cloud based system will also supply continuous data on
each major component to the supplier of that component.
When a problem or opportunity arises, there will be a tier based
solution. For simple problems, the
BOO operator will provide the answers or defer to a generalist and the supplier
company.
For difficult or important problems and opportunities the BOO operator will
bring in "subject matter specialists".
McIlvaine believes that this domain expertise is not only the key to IIoT
success but the biggest opportunity for APC system suppliers.
In fact, McIlvaine argues that the Industrial Internet of Wisdom (IIoW)
will generate more revenues for suppliers than IIoT.
McIlvaine has created a beta site to demonstrate this potential
4S01 Berkshire
Hathaway Energy Supplier and Utility Connect.
As part of this demonstration McIlvaine hosted nine hours of webinars on ways to
more economically solve a potential $700 million NOx problem.
Presentations by GE, Siemens, Doosan, and Emerson on optimization of boiler
operations were accompanied by some presentations on novel approaches. The end
result is a potential $200 million capital investment saving accompanied by
operational savings of more than $15 million per year in energy, consumables,
and repair.
At the present time, there are pilot plant demonstrations underway to prove the
value of the concepts. If
successful the various aspects can be incorporated by a BOO supplier and sold to
utilities around the world. The
conclusion would be that IIoT opens the door for faster adoption of newer and
better technologies. Those
suppliers who take full advantage will develop better products and generate
higher sales and margins.
McIlvaine is identifying the opportunities for IIOT and Remote O&M relative to
each APC technology including power plant FGD and NOx control,
industrial scrubbing, absorption and adsorption, fabric filtration,
electrostatic precipitation, thermal oxidation, and NOx control from
industrial sources and engines.
Thermal and catalytic oxidation system operators can benefit from IIoT in many
ways. With RTO systems there is a
complex system challenge. Gas must be diverted periodically among three vessels.
With flaring and standard thermal oxidation with recuperation there are
continuing combustion variables.
With catalytic oxidation there are catalyst maintenance issues and in some cases
the need to control very toxic fumes.
Since the emissions from these systems are typically measured and data about
them streamed to remote locations (government agencies) there is an IIoT base
from which to expand.
Honeywell and Aereon are collaborating on IIoT solutions. Aereon works across
the complete oil and gas supply chain to provide solutions for gas and vapor
handling, combustion and recovery that allow its customers to meet stringent air
quality and safety regulations. It specializes in custom engineered or standard
options for flares, high efficiency combustors, thermal oxidizers, and vapor
recovery units.
Aereon's automation services group provides turnkey automation solutions to the
oil and gas industry. It uses leading HMI software like Wonderware InTouch,
RSView and PLCs like Allen-Bradley, GE, Siemens and Modicon. Aereon supplies
custom design control systems, including level I and level II automation, human
machine interfaces (HMI) and reporting packages.
Fugitive emissions from the oil and gas industry can also be remotely monitored.
Shell is remotely monitoring these emissions as reported in the McIlvaine
IIoT Oil and Gas Webinar several weeks ago.
Megtec (B&W) is an example of a thermal oxidizer company who is already a
process advisor to chemical manufacturers.
The company supplies solvent recovery systems as well as a range of
oxidation systems. A plant can be
switched from one solvent to another during the day.
Depending on the value of the solvent the vapors can either be combusted
or recovered. Instead of just
providing advice Megtec can be the remote partner who helps the plant with these
daily decisions. Since it can
leverage knowledge of solvent value across many plants, it can spend the time to
provide continuous assessment.
Fabric filter suppliers have the opportunity to completely change the industry.
Until 1980 most dust collector suppliers also provided the replacement bags.
BHA revolutionized the industry with a computerized program and lots of
phoning to become more knowledgeable than the suppliers about each installation.
Today most bags are sold to the end user by specialized bag suppliers.
Nearly $3 billion is spent annually to replace bags.
The system supplier can provide Sourcing as a Service (SaaS) and annual
flat fee contracts for bag replacement.
The system supplier will have the IIoW to minimize bag failures and
reduce operating costs for the owner.
The bag supplier income will be reduced because of discounts to the BOO,
but all the continuous performance information will create an opportunity for
the bag supplier to innovate and develop more cost-effective products. The bag
supplier willing to invest in R&D will therefore be a winner.
IIoT and Remote O&M is already being implemented for SO2 and NOx
control in power plants. System suppliers are offering IIoT services as are
component and reagent suppliers.
Yara has a NOx reagent monitoring and supply service, Howden offers
fan operation and maintenance services. MHPS has a remote-control center in the
Philippines where English speakers support emission control operations at gas
turbine and other power plants throughout Asia. Another MHPS center is located
in Orlando. Lhoist and Lafarge are
capable of supplying worldwide support for lime and limestone to capture SO2.
Gas turbine emissions are now being remotely monitored at more than 50,000 sites
around the world. Gas turbine rotating part health is remotely monitored at
thousands of sites. There are a
number of third party operators with remote control services, so this is an
immediate opportunity for APC suppliers.
Many absorbers are used in processes and are critical to product quality. This
is common in the chemical industry but opportunities abound in many industries.
McIlvaine has unique knowledge about the ability of a two-stage scrubber
used with coal combustion to provide rare earth feedstock.
Many electrostatic precipitators are already remotely monitored by the suppliers
who track precipitator characteristics and can control them to optimize
performance as coal characteristics change.
For more information on IIoT & Remote O&M click on:
Industrial IOT
and Remote O&M
For more information on the Air Pollution Control IIoT webinar click on:
Weekly IIoT Webinars
Bob McIlvaine
President
847-784-0012 ext. 112
rmcilvaine@mcilvainecompany.com
www.mcilvainecompany.com