EE 3070 Technical Paper

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Jan 9, 2024

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LOUISIANA STATE UNIVERISTY Electronics and Instrumentation Engineering Internship EE 3070 Engineering Practice – Scalzo Steven M Kuzy /2013

I worked two consecutive summer internships with Albemarle Corporation in Electronics and Instrumentation Project Engineering (E&I). My summer of 2012 was spent in Pasadena, Texas working for Doug Auger and Wes Killebrew at one of Albemarle’s Texas plants. My summer of 2013 was spent in Baton Rouge, Louisiana working between Albemarle’s corporate headquarters and their Product Development Center (PDC). While in Baton Rouge I reported to Jerry Hubbs and Ryan DiFulco. While I was in Pasadena I was introduced to the general process of engineering a successful project. This process is useful in all areas of Electrical Engineering and I simplified it down to eight steps. Those steps are: Scope Development, Estimation, Circulate for Approvals, Engineering Design, Construction, Loop Check and Start Up, Notice of Start Up, Notice of Project Completion. Scope development involves figuring out what the customer wants and what you will need to implement it. Rough measurements are taken for any new construction and the number of instruments is estimated to allow for accurate cost estimation. During this time the engineer needs to figure out how much this project will cost and do their best to make it affordable while maintaining high quality standards. Once the project is thoroughly planned it gets released to various higher levels of management depending on how much money it will cost. Albemarle uses outside engineering firms to generate the specific construction plans but it is their engineers’ job to make sure these plans are accurate to the project specifics. During the actual build process, the project engineer does their best to make sure everything stays on schedule and is built to Albemarle’s safety codes. When construction is complete (this includes ~ 1 ~

all the electrical components as well as mixing tanks, pipes, buildings, etc.) it is the electrical engineer’s job to go through and loop check all the instruments. Once everything is deemed to be working the final paper work is filled out and notices of startup and project completion are issued. In Pasadena, I worked on the scope development for a project to retrofit the Plant Information Channel Monitors (PIC-10s) to pick up a narrower bandwidth due to heightened FCC regulation in the Houston Ship Channel. Below is a picture of one of these receivers from the plant. To begin the scope development I had to first figure out how many PIC-10s we had throughout the plant. I used an old site drawing that had the locations of most of the receivers on it to start documenting where they were. I spent a few days searching the entire site to verify the location based on the map and added additional locations as I found them. To the right is a snap shot of the site map that had the locations of the PIC-10s. The blue dots are confirmed locations on the site. Once I updated this drawing with all the locations, a new version was drafted to keep track of the receivers I was going to test. To test the receivers I scheduled a day with the ~ 2 ~

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safety department were we could make test announcements across the site on the new bandwidth. I also assembled a group of interns to help me monitor as many receivers as possible during each test broadcast to cut down on the time announcements had to be made. The Albemarle plant site at Pasadena has three other companies on the site. These three companies pay Albemarle to run site wide safety and security, which means some of the PIC-10s were located in other companies units and offices. This scope development provided me with valuable experience in interfacing with other companies while trying to complete a task. Additionally I learned how I/O rooms are set up and how to spec an instrument. To the left is a photo of me in an I/O room tracing wires from their control cards to their fuse termination. This was a great way to see how the wiring diagrams were executed and stressed the importance of keeping up with documentation. There were many wires landed in the wrong spots and some that were not indicated at all. Over the course of the summer all the wires were accounted for except for one. This was a great hands on experience as well as it allowed me to get inside the I/O boxes and physically trace the wires. Specifying an instrument is one of the most important things an E&I engineer does. The spec sheet holds all the pertinent information about the device; from what its rating is to its tolerances and reading settings. The chemical process data that goes along with this is what ~ 3 ~

these specifications are based off of. While I was in Pasadena I got to spec and order a few different instruments for the wireless camera job I worked on. To the right is a picture of a piece of one of these spec sheets that I actually put together. During my next internship with Albemarle at their Baton Rouge Corporate Headquarters I got the chance to go out to the plant and assist in loop checks for new construction. A loop check’s purpose is to verify that the installed instruments are installed and working correctly before turning the project over to its owner. This is usually done with two people, one in the field and one at a distributed control system terminal (DCS). I was the person in the field this summer and got hands on experience with many different tools and instruments. I used a multimeter, ALTEK current simulator, and a HART 475 Communicator. The multimeter and current simulator were used to verify voltages and simulate 4-20 mA signals respectively. The older analog instruments in the plant use a 4-20 mA signal with 4 mA as a logic low and 20 mA as a logic high. A level gauge for instance would output 4 mA back to the DCS if the tank was empty and a 20 mA signal if it was full. I would hook the ALTEK up to the analog ~ 4 ~

instruments and simulate a few various signals to verify that the instrument was displaying correctly in the DCS. The HART 475 communicator allows for a digital HART signal to be sent on top of the analog 4-20 mA. This HART protocol has all the instrument’s parameters on it and allows you to change values right at the instrument. While the newer instruments that run on a HART protocol still use a 4-20 mA signal the addition of the HART protocol makes it much easier to program the instruments since the parameters are stored in the instrument. Out of everything I used to loop check I used this one the most and it was by far the most interesting device. During loop checking I was asked to program some Variable Frequency Drives (VFD) that were used to run the pumps and motors on the project. In the past the engineer in charge of this task programmed all the VFDs individually, but with a little time spent reading the manual I figured out how to stream line the process. There are faceplates that can store setting profiles on them that you can then go and transfer to another VFD. There were 17 VFDs on the project and most of them had the same settings. By only having to program a few profiles and then just transferring the data using the faceplate, I had the VFDs programmed in record time. ~ 5 ~

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My time at the Corporate Headquarters was spent working on new and existing project instrument databases. These databases are used to make maintenance easier and to set a precedent to follow for future projects. I got to work with instruments for a project based out of Korea which was a great experience. Some of the units of measurements were different and the safety class ratings were different from the ones I had been familiar with previously. Overall I had a great two summers and got plenty of hands on experience with project engineering and instrumentation. ~ 6 ~