Emerson Process Management has opened its Emerson Innovation Centre – Fisher® Technology in Marshalltown, Iowa, USA. This USD 30 million investment is designed to help customers tackle the toughest engineering challenges facing today’s process manufacturing and energy industries. The 12,600sq/m Emerson Innovation Centre is designed to help companies deliver record volumes of natural gas and other forms of energy, and consume less in the process, reducing costs and making plants run quieter and with reduced greenhouse emissions. The centre is home to the world’s largest “flow lab” that, for the first time, enables large valves to be tested in real-world plant conditions to ensure production reliability, efficiency, environmental compliance, and safety before being installed at a customer site. The centre’s flow lab has enough capacity to fill an Olympic-sized swimming pool in just over 8 minutes, or a Goodyear blimp in about 12 seconds. Control valves can be tested at pressures up to 240bar, the equivalent of providing enough force to support a sport utility vehicle on a postage stamp. Meanwhile, the centre is also home to a 2400sq/m sound chamber in which Emerson can develop and verify noise levels of new devices before a customer’s plant is built.
