Oil refinery remote monitoring and control system under hazardous environments

Industry	Process Automation
Company	An UK based Worldwide Petrochemical Company
Products	IMC-101 Series EDS-405A/408A Series
In Brief	A well-known global petroleum company has recently upgraded the remote control and monitoring system in its Belgium manufacturing site. The two main goals of the upgrade are to create a centralized control system, and maintain a reliable communication network. The procedure used to refine oil products requires careful attention to the temperature and pressure. In addition, by their very nature, refineries make use of inflammable materials that could be exposed to direct sunlight during the daytime.

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A well-known global petroleum company has recently upgraded the remote control and monitoring system in its Belgium manufacturing site. The two main goals of the upgrade are to create a centralized control system, and maintain a reliable communication network. The procedure used to refine oil products requires careful attention to the temperature and pressure. In addition, by their very nature, refineries make use of inflammable materials that could be exposed to direct sunlight during the daytime. In order to ensure the safety of the plant, systems must be well-designed so that sparks cannot reach inflammables, and it is necessary to use rugged devices for the monitoring and management system.

The company wanted the upgrade to provide sufficient bandwidth for all current as well as future information needs. This not only included current data supplied to a central control room for operations, engineering, and maintenance, but also a system that could support voice, video monitoring, and security infrastructure that could be expanded later when needed.

System Description

The control and monitoring system can be separated into seven individual units for each monitoring and control cell. For long distance communication between cells in the plant, it was decided to use a single mode fiber optic network as the communication network between key devices and the control center. The system integrator, Honeywell, used DCS for monitoring the temperature and pressure. The signal is collected and transmitted to the control room through the Ethernet communication network, which is a redundant single mode fiber network over refinery cells created by Moxa's ED6008-S-SC-T Ethernet switches. For sites that are not easily reachable, the IMC-101-S-SC-T Ethernet to fiber media converters were used to extend the communication distance.

Since the monitoring cells are either in or next to high temperature refinery areas, the devices used for this project are required to operate under the Class 1 Zone 2 standard. Another issue that must be considered is the reliability of the devices. The operating temperature in the cells is high, and the refinery is usually unmanned, so that in general no one will be available to troubleshoot the situation when a device fails. For this reason, the ED6008-S-SC-T and IMC-101-S-SC-T were adopted because of their rugged design, high MTBF rating, fan-less design, and extended operating temperature of -40 to 75°C.

Engineers now have complete control over all tank farm operations and can configure alarm settings and alerts to be notified directly or remotely when an event occurs. The communications, safety, and security infrastructure has been greatly improved, fewer people are needed to monitor the same number of storage facilities, and it is easier to add items such as remote cameras or other monitoring (I/O) devices to the network.

Overall Benefits:

Centralized monitoring and control over a fiber industrial Ethernet network.
The ED6008 and IMC-101 Series have passed Div.2/Zone 2 regulatory approvals, meaning they can be used in explosive environments.
The ED6008 and IMC-101 Series satisfy long distance transmission requirements by supporting single mode fiber.
Moxa "T" models for Ethernet switches and media converters are rated to operate reliably under extreme temperature conditions (from -40 to 75°C), which is rugged enough for refinery environments.
The fan-less and low power requirement design ensures a high MTBF of 230,000 hrs and 810,000 hrs for ED6008 and IMC-101 Series.
The ED6008 series can send out a warning e-mail in response to anomalous behavior, or when network failures are detected, providing system managers with real-time alarm messages.
IP-based networks are easy to integrate with other systems and applications.