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Focus Energia e Oil&Gas INFORMAZIONE PUBBLICITARIA Shaping the The world’s first switch that

future. brings Ethernet into the field of

process plants.

PEPPERL+FUCHS Ethernet-APL Rail Field Switch—

the latest FieldConnex® innovation

“Ethernet-APL”:

A new era for the industry

For more information, visit
pepperl-fuchs.com/tr-APL

The global process industry has largely missed out on communication is associated with numerous restric-
the digital revolution so far, and there were good re- tions. For example, different data formats repeatedly
asons. But it’s time to rethink, because Ethernet-APL the reason that fi eld devices can only communicate im-
has triggered in a whole new era for the industry. perfectly with the system and thus existing information
Process plants generally have a life cycle of several de- remains unused.
cades. They are often large plants with a considerable Not only the process industry considers, Big Data as
geographical spread. Not only does the communica- the decisive key to more effi ciency and profi tability of
tion infrastructure need to bridge large distances. It is a plant. This
also constantly exposed to all kinds of weather condi- makes it all the
tions and must therefore be designed to be particularly more alarming
robust. In addition, there are often high electromagnetic that around 60
infl uences and/or potentially explosive areas, which % of the time
place very special demands on all infrastructure com- currently spent
ponents. In addition, in process plants it has also pro- on Big Data
ven to be the best solution to route both the data and analysis does
the power supply of the individual fi eld devices via one not actually bring
and the same cable. any benefi t, but
Plant operators therefore have good reasons to stick is required solely
with proven technologies that are backed by many ye- for acquisition,
ars of experience. preparation and processing of the data. In today’s di-
However, technical development has not stood still in gital world, however, data should actually be as readily
the process area either. As a result, the automation sy- available as electricity from the socket.
stem of a plant often consists of several systems that Ethernet-APL is the key to a new type of fl at commu-
operate according to different standards and com- nication infrastructure in the process area. It stands in
municate with each other via gateways. Engineering, contrast to the hierarchically structured system envi-
operation and maintenance of such a heterogeneous ronments of today’s plants and allows unhindered ac-
environment are correspondingly complex and data cess to all process data down to each individual fi eld
device. In addition, Ethernet-APL fi eld devices and
other infrastructure components allow data access fully
independent of the running process and are also able
to communicate directly with each other.
Until now, process plants have been more or less isola-
ted solutions that offer only a few interfaces to the infor-
mation technology of the company that operates them.
Ethernet-APL will thus become an integrated compo-
nent of a uniform and universal communication lan-
dscape, making the principles of Industry 4.0 a reality
for the process industry as well. After all, Ethernet is just
as much behind the Internet of Things as it is behind
Big Data, the cloud, ubiquitous mobile communications
and the Internet.
www.pepperl-fuchs.com

82 82 Impiantistica Italiana - Marzo-Aprile 2023