Widescreen HMIs for hazardous areas

03 July 2012

R. STAHL has introduced a range of large-format widescreen HMIs which offer a future-proof solution to replace and upgrade existing 15in and 19in operating stations for hazardous areas.

The most obvious conversion scenario is through the migration of a production site to a new operating system or DCS. The 22in and 24in HMIs can help to increase operating and visualisation comfort – the LED backlight generally ensures a more luminous display and better readability of images. This can also offer also benefits for users of older-generation process control systems.

For more recent versions and for imminent upgrades of widely used DCSs, the large screens also provide the required higher widescreen format resolutions. Hence, these powerful HMIs can support possible future upgrades at control level while displaying process images of current systems in the usual way, without requiring any new engineering or configuration.
In chemical plants, pharmaceutical processes and related areas of industry, upgrades from legacy HMIs to these widescreen systems only required the plugs and the explosion-proof terminal itself to be replaced. Other existing installations, such as stands or cables can be reused. Thanks to the LED backlights.

The LED backlit HMIs also use less energy that conventional TFT monitors despite their larger displays. In addition, the new devices are free of any hazardous substances such as mercury and lead.