News

Innovation In Automation

“There is no shortcut to experience,” says Trident Automation CEO Yogesh Maheshwari. In a job where the need to adapt and problem solve is a constant reality, Trident Automation’s engineers have built up experience to handle the complex challenges of installing and maintaining ethanol plant distributed control systems (DCS) over the past 22 years. Trident was founded in the early 2000s to facilitate the needs of the burgeoning—and increasingly automated—ethanol industry, installing DCS in plants alongside the well-known designers and […] Read More

Trident Automation Marks 20-year anniversary

Right now, ethanol plants are fermenting on schedule, manufacturing processes are running efficiently, and new technology is being switched on with the assistance of Trident Automation. This year, the controls automation firm celebrates 20 years in business designing process controls for manufacturing environments. “We like to think of ourselves as ‘in the pipes’ type of guys,” says Jason Hurst, CEO of Trident Automation. “Our job is to regulate and control anything that flows through a pipe or requires measurement in […] Read More

Ethanol plant on cruise control with the assistance of Trident

Golden Grain Energy turns Iowa’s bountiful corn crop into ethanol energy and to do it, they use “cruise control” for their plant. Each year, the corn crop is converted to 120,000,000 gallons of ethanol in a state-of-the-art production facility. The staff of about 50 manages daily production thanks to an efficient and dependable DCS system with oversight by Trident Automation. Trident has been working with the plant since 2004 and Golden Grain CEO Chad Kuhlers credits Trident with facilitating the […] Read More

Open platform system saves ethanol plant millions

Golden Grain Energy in Mason City, Iowa, was looking for a way to reduce maintenance costs for their operating systems. Golden grain produces 125M gallons /year of distiller’s grains and non-food grade corn oil. The plant was running an Advanced Process Control (APC) “black box” which had worked well until modifications were needed. Although system controls reside in PCs rather than the DCS, the system is effective with non-linear and adaptive process. However, it requires extensive process knowledge and process […] Read More

How to determine when an alarm is really an emergency

In a quest to better manage production, high alarm rates have a negative outcome: information overload. When all systems are triggering alarms, how does any critical information get through to an operator? When Golden Grain Energy upgraded from APACS to Siemens PCS 7, Trident Automation worked with the plant to create the most customized alarm management system possible. “Our process helps the customer to better organize alarm systems,” said Nate Nutter, PCS 7 Certified Engineer, at Trident Automation. “When customers […] Read More