Yokogawa releases enhanced version of ProSafe-RS safety instrumented system

Development Background
There is a growing emphasis on operational safety in the oil, natural gas, petrochemical, and other industries that arises from the need to ensure a safe workplace and be a responsible corporate citizen by, for example, protecting the environment. Although distributed control systems (DCSs) and safety instrumented systems have conventionally been kept separate, high-level integration of their functions is increasingly required to ensure the right balance between operational efficiency and safety.

To meet these needs, Yokogawa released the ProSafe-RS safety instrumented system, and has continuously strengthened its functions to work in conjunction with the CENTUM CS3000 R3 integrated production control system. In particular, these enhancements have strengthened functions that improve efficiency by enabling instrumentation rooms to be placed in one central location.

Overview of enhancements
1. Increased communications range
By using optical bus repeaters, the ProSafe-RS controller and the I/O modules can now communicate at distances up to 50 km over a fiber optic cable. This enables the instrumentation rooms for individual processes and the safety instrumented controllers located throughout a large-scale plant to be placed in a single location.

Furthermore, this increase in the communications range enables the monitoring and control of field devices for safety instrumentation that are installed in wellhead areas and other remote locations.

2. Addition to input / output module lineup
A high current digital output module for long distance wiring has been added to the module lineup.

3. Simulation test function added
A simulation test function has been added that uses software* to test the communication with DCSs, operation monitoring, and communication between safety instrumented system controllers. With this function, these simulations can be run when a connection with the hardware has not been established, improving engineering work efficiency.
* To carry out these simulation tests, a separate test software package for the CENTUM CS 3000 R3 is required.

Major target markets and applications
ProSafe RS is ideal for use in oil, natural gas, petrochemical, and other process industries that make use of systems for emergency plant shutdown, fire prevention/fighting, and burner management.