Yokogawa Releases ProSafe-RS Safety System That Integrates Control with Safety


Yokogawa Electric Corporation announces the launch of ProSafe-RS, a new safety system that has been designed for integrated use with process automation (PA) applications. This safety system is used to constantly monitor the status of oil, natural gas, petrochemical, and other process applications, and ensures safety by shutting down a plant whenever an unexpected condition is detected. The ProSafe-RS safety system can be integrated with Yokogawa’s world-leading CENTUM series of process control systems, eliminating for the first time the need to build process control and safety systems separately. As a result, plant information can be managed centrally, and the integrated information contributes to greater operational efficiency and safety.

Development background
As one of the top manufacturers in the process control field, Yokogawa has invested heavily in developing sophisticated process control systems. In 1997, the company entered the safety instrumented system business with its series of ProSafe safety controllers, which comply with the IEC 61508 international standard. Because their roles and functions are different, process control systems and safety systems have traditionally been constructed separately. However, there has been a growing need to integrate the two systems in order to centralise the management of plant information. There also is an increased requirement to enhance the safety and reliability of safety systems, and to adopt safety systems that can flexibly handle plants of all sizes. The new ProSafe-RS safety controller meets all these market requirements and is a core building block in Yokogawa’s VigilantPlant solutions. VigilantPlant promises to bring operational excellence to plants by creating an environment where plant personnel and operators are watchful and attentive, well-informed, and ready to take action. Operational excellence in plant safety management can be achieved by detecting pending abnormal events well before they become a problem, and transforming the role of the operator from reacting to problems to making intelligent decisions about the process and plant operations. Through the use of solutions that integrate a CENTUM series integrated process control system with the new ProSafe-RS safety system, Yokogawa aims to help its customers achieve operational excellence and become the number one player in the global PA market by the year 2010.

Product features
1. Integration with the process control system The process control and safety systems can share the same control network and human interface station, as well as data. The ProSafe-RS can be operated and monitored using the equipment of the process control system. As operators can perform safety monitoring in an operation and monitoring environment that they are already familiar with, overall plant safety is greatly improved. And as a further example of the benefits that the integration of these systems can bring, alarms reported by the process control system and by the safety system can be simultaneously displayed on a single screen for quick response.
2. Outstanding safety in a single configuration Even if the I/O boards are mounted in a single configuration, Safety Integrity Level (SIL)
3* is achieved because the ProSafe-RS uses the same ultra-reliable technology that was developed for the CENTUM series. To ensure even higher levels of system availability and fault tolerance, both the CPU and the boards on the ProSafe-RS can be configured for dual redundancy, and this option is now easier to implement because the boards are half the size of those used in previous controller versions. * The Safety Integrity Level (SIL) indicates the range of risk reduction. The risk factor of a plant with SIL 3 safety measures is in the range 1/1,000 to 1/10,000. The risk factor of a plant with SIL 1 safety measures is in the range of 1/10 to 1/100.