SAMA Symbols Introduction

Scientific Apparatus Makers Association, (SAMA) is the organization that came up with the symbolic language to represent advanced control schemes. Green Energy Engineering, Inc., has used SAMA symbols for over 30 years to describe boiler controls and has introduced many young engineers to this powerful new (old) process control language.

Industries and utilities alike are renewing their emphasis on boiler efficiency, energy savings and lower emissions levels, as reducing their “carbon footprint” takes on greater importance. Engineers are analyzing the control systems and instrumentation for boilers, putting on paper the complex processes and interactions that make boilers function. Some may be doing it to add a renewable energy to the fuel mix, to increase overall output, to meet regulatory requirements or to receive tax rebates from government. This focus on a “green” energy-producing environment has lead to a revival of interest among process engineers and others in the old and esoteric notations called SAMA symbols.

SAMA symbols are used to develop and convey the complex functional interworking of boiler control loops. Most control loops in industry are simple temperature, pressure, level, or flow loops made up of just three devices including: a transmitter, controller, and control valve. However, boiler controls involve feed back, feed forward, cascade, and parallel functions.

The white papers listed below are offered to the engineering community as a service by Green Energy Engineering, Inc. Those of us with gray hair need to pass our tools along to those new college graduates who can still do calculus but have not yet tuned a boiler.

Note: Articles 7, 8, and 9 are still being written. Watch our web site for these future additions.