A complete suite of HART-enabled gas and flame detectors is now available from General Monitors. These safety instruments are said to protect employees, equipment and facilities from the dangers of hydrocarbon gases, toxic gases, oxygen depletion and flames.
HART is a field-proven instrumentation communications protocol that is easy to use and provides uniform and consistent communication without disturbing the integrity of the 4-20 mA analog signal. In addition to the process variable, the HART protocol permits access to device configuration, diagnostics, as well as maintenance and alarm records. As a result, a whole host of additional information related to plant operation is available to the control room through HART. Unlike other digital communication protocols, HART is backwards compatible with the installed base of instrumentation in use today.
Standard HART commands make it simple for systems to configure and adjust the gas and flame detectors to the particular requirements of the plant. A flame detector, for example, can be tagged with a name for greater ease of use (e.g., “Reactor 1 Flame Detector”). Alarm and warning set points can be adjusted, delay times set and alarms acknowledged or reset by simply sending a command. Such real-time, continuous access to device variables improves control.
Because these detectors are equipped with event logging, managers and technicians have access to time-stamped records of all maintenance performed on the device.
