Emerson Process Management, a part of Emerson, the $21billion, US-headquartered global manufacturing and technology company, claims to offer the widest array of advanced instrumentation, control, and automation technologies available from any supplier for the power generation and water/wastewater industries. Keven Dunphy, Flow Business Director, Middle East & Africa, Emerson Process Management, spoke to Anoop K Menon on how and why the company’s advanced flow products are gaining acceptance in the water sector, the benefits for customers from its new Middle East Flow Service Centre in Abu Dhabi and key trends in the flow product and business spaces.
It seems to me that, though both municipal water and oil & gas sectors are ‘process’ oriented, historically, the former has the reputation of being a ‘price-sensitive’ market. While both use, more or less, similar process equipment, the technological sophistication of the oil & gas business doesn’t seem to have much headway in the water business. Is this changing?
Keven Dunphy
The safety-related aspects that oil & gas customers stress on drive specific, cost-related functions within our product offering. In fact, intrinsic safety, explosion-proof and other safety parameters are critical if you are working with hydrocarbons. But the same emphasis doesn’t apply to the water business.
If we take an oil & gas product and put it in the water market, we could be building more costs into it because the product is over-designed for the water market. Our challenge is to take out the costs so that the water market is not burdened with features the oil & gas industry wants. I feel it is important to align your product to the specific needs of the customers and not try and sell the wrong thing to the wrong customer.
What is the major hindrance to selling flow meters to utilities here?
The number one issue is that of mindset which sticks to the tried and tested. Past track record of using mechanical technologies like turbine meters tends to dictate present and future preferences. However, in this region, we are now seeing new projects and facilities that are brand new or essentially, grass root facilities that don’t have a lot of track record or past installed base. They have an opportunity to re-evaluate where the market place stands today and embrace best practice technologies that have delivered on reliability and performance promises. They can move from traditional mechanical technologies, with moving or rotating parts, to best practice technologies like ultrasonic meters that eliminate all of that.
Could you tell us above how your new flow service centre in Abu Dhabi will benefit your customers in the water sector?
In the water sector, de-regulation and privatisation are driving the adoption of advanced technologies. Customers would like to be sure that the advanced flow meter they have been sold is correct on a periodic basis. The diagnostic capability of the flow meter should be able to tell them that the flow meter is correct. But the ultimate test of that is take the device out and send it to another place for performance diagnostics or calibration.
Our new flow service centre in Abu Dhabi brings that capability to the Middle East so that our customers can access the ultimate standard locally. They can send in their flow devices, compare them to an internationally established reference and confirm that the performance is what the device says it is. Our centre in Abu Dhabi not only enables us to establish the best practice in this regard, but makes the ultimate confirmation less expensive and less time consuming than in the past, when the flow meters would be shipped to Europe or America for the same services.
We also understand that it is not ideal to take the device out for any amount of time. Customers want to be able to check things inline, so at Emerson Process Management, we have come up with a diagnostic tool called meter verification. This process allows the device itself to tell you whether its calibration is stable and provides you a mechanism to support your ISO documentation needs.
Are there internationally-accepted calibration standards for the water marketplace?
In the oil & gas marketplace, there are well-defined standards for critical aspects like custody transfer, with a huge body of supporting work. In the water business, the physical transfer standards are not as important as the regulatory or governmental standards, and hence, not as well documented.
However, it all comes down to what is written within the quality systems of the individual companies. In other words, the ‘rubber meets the road’ point is the ISO 9000 implementation within the company. Local water utilities are only just starting to embrace these ideas. The regulatory infrastructure to support these best practices is also in the works in the region. For example, the UAE is planning to roll out a metrology law, with major implications across industries. If you have a device and you claim a certain level of performance, you have to document its traceability.
If we look at smart metering in the power sector, for example, customers are demanding sustained performance, accuracy and conservation. Are similar demands being voiced with regard to flow devices too?
I think flow metering fits exactly within the three bullet points you have cited. Historically, utilities have always preferred the magnetic flow meter or magmeter for the measurement of process fluids, and looking ahead, I don’t see this preference changing because their simple design, easy performance and good diagnostics meet all of the points you have mentioned. The challenge for us is to offer them a magmeter with the right combination of features and benefits that allow the technical aspects as well as the commercial requirements of individual transactions to be met.
Ten years ago, we may not have been the preferred supplier in the water marketplace because we worked here asking for business. But in the past few years, we have invested in the region, created a team and brought in expertise from other regions into the Middle East. We are now in a position to satisfy, not only the basic requirements, in terms of product capabilities and availability of knowledgeable people to support them, but also offer specific benefits in terms of best practices. For example, the meter verification capability I mentioned earlier is unique to our company, informing you on whether the flow meter’s calibration is stable over time.
Where does this meter verification intelligence reside?
It is an option within the electronics, a signature process really. At the time of manufacture of the magmeter (we can also retrofit this into an existing one), we capture a signature of the magnetic field. We compare that signature over time to see whether it has changed. The accuracy required from the system would be impacted if there was some kind of mechanical stress that caused the actual coils or physical components to shift, or if there was some interaction with the process fluid within the unit that caused the magnetic field to change and in turn, the calibration factor and the device’s output. If accuracy slips, reliability slips because the process has to be shut down. With meter verification, I can track all that through a diagnostic procedure, which exists within the electronics and is running continuously in the background. I can also check the performance of the system remotely through wired or wireless modes.
But if the customer wants to recalibrate, he would have to take it offline to your facility?
The expectation is that the magmeter isn’t going to need re-calibration. Now you and I can have that confidence, but I can’t just tell my ISO auditors or my management that the device is right because I think it is right. I need documentary evidence that validates my claim. Ultimately, the stability expected must be demonstrated with a piece of paper.
We tell our customers that they could install a magmeter that meets the fundamental baseline expectations of performance and accuracy with the optional diagnostics capability and implement all of that within a wired or wireless asset management system, which produces all the documentation they need.
Does water quality or piping material have a bearing on the accuracy of the measurement?
A fundamental requirement is that the magmeter is magnetically isolated from the surrounding piping with the help of grounding electrodes or rings as the case may be. These come as standard options. The quality of the water isn’t an issue because there is more than enough conductivity in the water. The issue is the way the water goes through the system. Interruptions, entrained air, upset conditions, air bubbles create challenges for the meter to produce an accurate measurement. However, our products are more than capable of overcoming these problems. They were developed originally to cope with the extremely challenging flow requirements of industries like hydrocarbon, chemicals, petrochemicals and pulp & paper. When the same robustness is brought to bear on the needs of the water utilities, you see a level of capability that not everyone has.
Could you also speak on the areas in flow metering where you see improvements taking place?
Advances in flow metering are taking place mainly in three areas. First, the mechanical components around the sensor itself, which in the case of the magmeter, would be the lining material. How do I use various types of lining materials that increase the flexibility and application range of the device? Can I go to a higher pressure line or can I go to a higher temperature application without impacting accuracy or liability requirements of the devices?
The second area of improvement is electronics, and that will serve, again, two challenges. First, how to meet the operational requirements under demanding conditions like upsets or partially filled lines. The basic operation, despite demanding conditions, comes as the electronics and then, you factor into it the diagnostics capability. The questions that need to be addressed are how do I get the diagnostics, how do I do it within the device and also, do it in a way in which I have access to it. It is one thing to put diagnostics into a device but another thing to make it convenient and easy to access wherever you are.
When it comes to installation of flow meters, it is, for all purposes, a mechanical process, so the improvements will be mainly in terms of making the installation process straight-forward and easy, no different than any other pipe section. So no special requirements, no vibration issues, no special mounting arrangements; only the weight of the flow meter being installed has to be supported.
How do you approach the maintenance side of things?
In the case of utilities, from a maintenance or reliability standpoint, the flow meter is going to be around for a long time,
much longer than you and I will be around. When you have the right information and the right expert from a selling process interacting with the customer, you end up selecting the right device that meets such expectations. Things falter only when the customer puts out a public tender and gets 100 persons bidding, none of whom has ever spoken to him. He may end up with a mismatch because he gets technical compliance to a piece of paper rather than to the demands of the application.
Across Emerson Process Management, we have the full gamut of flow technologies; we also bring to the table flow consultants whose role is to take the customer’s needs, understand his application and make a recommendation of the available technologies. In a lot of cases, it is a very binary process. Typically, you are going to end up with an interaction of the commercial aspects along with the performance aspects of accuracy, rangeability and the associated pressure drops required in the application. Our experts are able to take those criteria and compare them for the customer to make the ultimate selection.
Do you engage with engineering consultants or the end-customer?
The best practice, always, is to talk to the person who is going to own and use the product. You have the opportunity to establish their expectations and help them understand what is available. However, in the actual implementation of a project, the consultants clearly play a role in the decision-making, while engineering companies will always be the ones doing the actual execution. So we talk to them as well.
Our investment in the end-user is a long term investment. Now he isn’t going to tell an individual contractor on an individual project to do this or that, but he is going to be influencing things in the background in the long term. In the end, it will always be about sharing best practices from all over the world because we, in the industry, will always touch more customers than any one customer will ever touch. That’s our advantage. Of course, the customer too has the advantage of knowing his application and its specifics better than we ever will. Bringing those two points of view together is what allows a good solution to end up getting specified.
How do you think the water market for flow meters develop in this region?
The region’s higher rates of population and economic growth are going to drive dramatic investments in the supporting power and water infrastructure. This infrastructure will have to grow at a dramatic pace in order to support the needs of the people and industry, whether it is oil & gas, chemicals, petrochemicals or metals. These new investments will unleash a lot of opportunities for us in the water business.
But there are opportunities in existing installations too. In Saudi Arabia, for instance, we are doing a retrofit plus new additions to an existing irrigation system to better control water distribution. That’s a great example of a hybrid project, where you deal with existing infrastructure as well as upgrade its capabilities.
Another major trend is that a lot of procurement and execution is taking place within the region. For example, in the case of a large desalination project near Jeddah, 75% of the execution is being done inside the kingdom. In the past, such a project would have been done completely by overseas suppliers. Today, we find that OEMs and suppliers who were operating outside in the past are now partnering with local outfits and establishing footprints and engineering bases in the region. This is a major change from the way business was done in the region, as early as five to 10 years ago. If you don’t have footprint here, you won’t have the people, infrastructure or experts to support your customers and their needs. In fact, our new flow service facility in Abu Dhabi is a representation of all of that.
What are the other ways you strive to help your customers and partners?
In the past few years, we have been putting people on the ground. Today, we are well over 500 people in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) region alone. While we continue to partner with local businesses, we are now supporting them with experts based locally rather than in Europe, the US or Asia.
Moreover, when you are partnering with a company like Emerson Process, you are also partnering with our global footprint. For example, we have people at our engineering centre in India, which is manned by 2,000-plus engineers, to lend support to our new middle east centre; We also have a customer support centre in Manila, where we have 6,000 employees providing back office support on a global basis. Combining this back office support with local footprint creates a powerful set of capabilities for our partners.
