Industrial Automation Magazine India

Almost all process industries are operated by fluid power automation systems

Published on : Wednesday 03-03-2021

K A Venkataraman, General Manager, Plant Operations.
 

Traditionally fluid power played an important role in automation. Has electrical actuation now taken over?
Though all types of automation is operated and controlled electrically, the real work is still done by fluid power actuation, which means pneumatic or hydraulic actuators. Electrical systems have still not replaced the final output or working element of an automation system. Pneumatic actuation/actuator is economically cheaper and reliable to handle low to moderate workloads and hydro-pneumatic or complete hydraulic actuators are cheaper to handle moderate to heavy workloads. Hence still electrical actuation has not taken over the others, at least in India and Asian countries.
 
What are the advantages fluid power still offers vis-à-vis electromechanical drives?
Almost all the types of industries are using air compressors and hydraulic power packs for their various regular production purposes other than automation, which is the main power source. So no separate or little addition of power consumption only required during the functioning of automation units, whereas each and every electro-mechanical drive used for one automation unit/equipment consumes electric power separately, which in turn increases the cost of power consumption.
 
Large vehicles and the automotive industry have accounted for much interest in hydraulics. Will the upsurge of electrical vehicles sound a death knell for hydraulics?
Normally electronic or electric actuation cannot handle moderate to heavy workloads. For example, though a garbage handling truck can be an electrically operated vehicle itself in the near future, the tipper which can handle a huge weight of the garbage in the behind portion of the vehicle cannot be actuated electrically. It will continue as hydraulic actuation only for at least one to two decades from now. Even attaining the notable population of passenger EVs on roads that can replace the existing petrol/diesel-operated vehicles will take one decade. 
 
What are the new trends that hold promise for hydraulics and pneumatics in the digital era? 
Nowadays, digital pressure sensors, temperature sensors, programmable logical controllers (PLC) with human-machine interfaces (HMI) are getting more advanced in features year on year, as well as IoT/IIoT equipment, also provides sophisticated digital facilities. Obviously, digitalisation helps to monitor, fix, maintain and control the efficiency of automation as well as provides preventive maintenance alerts and avoids accidents as safety precautionary measures. But digitalisation cannot perform the repeated tasks to handle the workloads. It provides extra features and support to the further growth of hydraulics and pneumatics for precise and accurate quality with productivity of automation.
 
How relevant is fluid power in process industries today?
Almost all the process industries are operated by fluid power automation systems only. For example, in oil & gas, mining, chemicals and power/energy sectors, they are transmitting operating or processing materials or operating fluids through different types of huge size hydraulic valves, say butterfly, globe, and knife-gate valves, which are operated either by pneumatic actuators only to provide and control the automation mechanism.
 
Are hydraulic and pneumatic devices compatible and in step with digital technologies and integrate with IIoT seamlessly?
Actually, this implementation/integration of hydro/pneumatic devices with IIoT has been started already in bigger industries already and now step down to MSME sector also wherever applicable/possible. In every automation, either hydraulic or pneumatic actuator is operated through electrical/solenoid valves only along with PLC/timer logic circuits. So for better control or sequencing of solenoid valves thus actuators are possible by communication systems used in IIoT devices.
 
K A Venkataraman, B.E (Mech) and M.E (Product Design and Development), has over 23 years of rich experience in the fluid power industry. A seasoned Pneumatic Expert with product development and techno-commercial competencies, he has developed over a hundred types of valves, actuators, FRLs, etc., and 1000+ variants/models from those types. Venkataraman has helped many pneumatic industries of India, and is instrumental in their growth, and developed some successful PSU projects for those companies he has worked with. He has handled various departments like R&D, QA/QC, Pilot Production, Purchase/SCM, Manufacturing/Machine Shop, and is presently working as GM – Operations for a private limited company in Coimbatore.