Process analyzers measure physical or chemical properties of a process flow. Smart Instrumentation supports two types of process analyzers — simple and complex.
Simple Analyzers
A simple analyzer measures one physical or chemical property of a process fluid at the point of measurement or fluid sampling.
Simple analyzers belong to the Conventional Tag Class.
Complex Analyzers
A complex analyzer also measures physical and chemical properties of a process flow at the point of measurement or fluid sampling. However, you have the following elements of flexibility in a complex analyzer:
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You can create multiple stream tags.
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For each stream tag, you can create multiple component/property tags.
You can use the complex analyzer methodology even where only a single component / property is measured, if the data sheet information requires specifying the complete process fluid composition for all components.
Although the application determines whether you define some analyzers as simple or complex, gas chromatographs are by their nature complex. Even if you consider one stream only, in general you will want to utilize the ability of a gas chromatograph to analyze various components/properties in the stream.