New Sampling/Sensor Initiative (NeSSI™)

NeSSI™ is a non-affiliated international ad hoc group composed of over 250 people (and growing) including end-users such as ExxonMobil, Chevron, Dow Chemical, and Eastman Chemical, as well as manufacturers of NeSSI™ components such as  ABB Analytical, Siemens, Fisher-Rosemount, Swagelok, Parker-Hannifin, CIRCOR and many others who are looking to modularize and miniaturize process analyzer sample system components.  NeSSI™ operates under the sponsorship and umbrella of CPAC (Center for Process Analytical Chemistry) at the University of Washington in Seattle. NeSSI™'s origins can be traced to various CPAC Focus Group sessions and a Tutorial presented at the November 1999 CPAC Sponsor Meeting. The membership focus of NeSSI™ has been on manufacturers who are willing to supply parts and components for this initiative as well as end-users who are willing to do "in house" testing. There are now several NeSSI™ sampling manifold designs which conform (approximately) to the SEMI 1.5" manifold. An ISA SP76 standard has been adopted. 

What is NeSSI™?

The New Sampling/Sensor Initiative aims to make significant improvement to the design and operation of on-line analyser systems.

The driving forces behind the initiative are economic: NeSSI™ will make analyser systems less expensive and they will give a better pay back.

The elements of a NeSSI™ system

The substrate provides the channels through which samples flow and the mechanical platform on which sample system components, sensors and analysers are mounted.

The NeSSI™-bus provides networked connectivity to components and sensors mounted on the substrate.

The Sensor Actuator Manager (SAM) is the interface between the NeSSI™-bus and EtherNet. It enables process measurements with their validity codes to be seen by a Distributed Contol System (DCS) and it enables maintenance-related data to be viewed from remote locations. SAM also includes smart functionality for advanced diagnosis of system health. Remote control of the sample system, for example valve switching is also available via the NeSSI™-bus and SAM.

For More Information Contact:  cpac@cpac.washington.edu

News

Find below links to the configurators for the three primary NeSSI™ vendors.

Presentations from the March 2009 CPAC Satellite Workshop in Rome, Italy are on-line.

Presentations from the January 2009 NeSSI™ session at the IFPAC Conference, Baltimore, Maryland, USA are on-line.

Presentations from the May 8, 2008 NeSSI™ Workshop at the CPAC Sponsor Meeting, Seattle, WA, USA are on-line.

Presentations from the January 28, 2008 NeSSI™ Session at the IFPAC Conference, Baltimore, Maryland, USA are on-line.

Thanks to Rob DuBois and Dave Simko, a list of NeSSI™ publications is available.

An interesting paper describing the historical co-evolution of NeSSI™ and the ISA/ANSI SP76 standard is available as a MS Word document courtesy of Bob Sherman, Universal Analyzers Inc. and Dave Simko, Swagelok.

There are several recent documents available.

As always, If you would like to make comments, or get involved in any aspect of NeSSI™, contact one of the NeSSI™ Steering Team members or CPAC directly.

A revised NeSSI™ Generation II Specification has been released. This revision further refines the envisioned architecture and functionality for second generation NeSSI™ systems and reflects the "evergreen" status for the specification. As always, comments and contributions are solicited from end-users, manufacturers, and developers.

Examples of NeSSI™ Systems

NeSSI™ Objectives

Our driver is to simplify and standardize sample system design. There is also a huge opportunity to adapt the emerging class of "lab on a chip" sensors to a miniature/modular "smart" manifold which could fundamentally change the way industry does process analysis.

Driving Forces for Change

A Complete History - NeSSI™

The following table shows significant milestones in the NeSSI™ program to date (organized in reverse chronological order) along with hyperlinks to related documents and presentations. Many of these links are to Microsoft Office documents (Word files and PowerPoint presentations) in their original form (not html pages) and will require that you have the supporting applications on your machine to view them. In some cases, there is also a version the documents in a more universal Adobe Acrobat reader (PDF) format that can be accessed by clicking on the icon.