Control System World

Technip, in a joint venture with Fluor, has been awarded an engineering, procurement and construction management contract by PRPC Utilities and Facilities Sdn. Bhd. for the PETRONAS Refinery and Petrochemical Integrated Development (RAPID) project located in the state of Johor, Malaysia. Under this contract, the Fluor and Technip joint venture will be responsible for the utilities, interconnecting and offsites (UIO) scope of work.

PRPC Utilities and Facilities Sdn. Bhd. is a subsidiary of PETRONAS Refinery and Petrochemical Corporation Sdn. Bhd. (PRPC), a company under the umbrella of Petroliam Nasional Berhad (PETRONAS) group, Malaysia’s national oil and gas company.

RAPID is part of PETRONAS Pengerang Integrated Complex development. It comprises RAPID and its associated facilities including the Pengerang co-generation plant, liquefied natural gas (LNG) re-gasification terminal, air separation unit, the raw water supply project as well as other ancillary facilities. RAPID will consist of a 300,000-barrels-per-day refinery and petrochemical complex with a combined capacity of producing 7.7 million metric tons per year of various grades of products, including differentiated and specialty chemicals products.

RAPID’s refinery start-up is expected by early 2019.  Technip’s operating centre in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, will execute the contract.

The new Remote Hand Station enables safe and secure local monitoring and control of Rotork IQ3 actuators installed in inaccessible locations.   Rotork’s superior solution provides the user with an exact duplicate of the actuator’s own monitoring and control interface, at a distance of up to 100 metres from the valve. Power for the Remote Hand Station is supplied by the actuator, with which the unit shares all the benefits of the same IP68 double O-ring sealed environmental enclosure. There is no need for expensive cabling; standard comms wiring suitable for the operating environment is all that is required between the actuator and the Remote Hand Station.

The user can remotely operate, interrogate and configure the actuator using the Rotork hand-held setting tool with its secure wireless Bluetooth link. Retaining all of the actuator’s functionality, the Remote Hand Station presents an identical window into the process, showing diagnostic data including the valve torque and usage profiles along with service logs and facilitating real time analysis directly at the unit.

Alternatively, information from the actuator datalogger can be downloaded and transferred to a PC for analysis using Rotork Insight2 diagnostic software to enable valve maintenance requirements to be identified and anticipated.

Designed for wall or pole mounted installation, the Remote Hand Station is available with explosionproof certification and can also be equipped with a vandal proof cover to prevent unauthorised interference.

KBR has announced today it has been awarded a three-year master services agreement (MSA) with Statoil Petroleum AS (Statoil) to provide engineering and procurement services for Statoil on a global scale. This agreement builds upon a long-term relationship between KBR and Statoil and provides Statoil access to KBR’s engineering expertise and capacity for their upcoming international field developments.

“We are very excited as this is a great opportunity to provide value-added support services to Statoil’s projects globally,” said Stuart Bradie, KBR President and CEO. “This award highlights Statoil’s confidence in KBR’s capabilities to deliver in multiple engineering discipline areas across a variety of projects.”

Additionally, the MSA will allow KBR to competitively bid on global services relating to concept studies, front end engineering design (FEED), detailed engineering and procurement services and general management assistance (EPCM) in connection with Statoil projects, both onshore and offshore. The MSA has an option to renew every three years for a total of 12 years.  Revenue will be booked to the Hydrocarbons business segment as work orders are awarded against the MSA.

Case Study:  NEP Solar developed, manufactures, and supplies the PolyTrough, a patented parabolic trough solar collector. NEP Solar also provides consulting services and delivers projects from conceptual design through to turnkey supply of solar thermal systems. Industrial heating is NEP Solar's key market where heat, normally generated by burning fossil fuels, is replaced with heat captured from the sun. The typical temperature is up to 250° C, although higher temperatures are possible.

The Urban Power Station, as NEP Solar and EnergyAE have dubbed it, is a first-of-its-kind solar thermal tri-generation system which has been installed in a new building for the Faculty of Engineering and IT (FEIT) at the University of Technology Sydney (UTS). The system comprises four PolyTrough 1200 parabolic trough solar collectors, a thermal storage tank, a 10 kWe organic Rankine cycle (ORC) turbine and a 19 kWr absorption chiller, heat exchangers, pumps, instruments, and a control system. The system can deliver electrical power, chilled water, lower temperature hot water (from the chiller and ORC condenser, for use in household hot water tanks), and higher temperature hot water.

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Yokogawa Electric Corporation announces that it has developed a new low-power version of the DPharp EJA-E series differential pressure/pressure transmitter and will release this product in all markets other than Japan and Europe on December 15. The European release will follow in 2015. This new low-power product outputs both 1 to 5 V DC and HART signals and has been developed to meet the specific requirements of oil and gas exploration and production (upstream) applications.

Yokogawa's differential pressure/pressure transmitters are playing a key role in achieving the objectives of the Evolution 2015 mid-term business plan, which calls for the company to focus on the booming upstream oil and gas industries, and in the implementation of a control business strategy that commits the company to capturing the No.1 position in the global sensor market. With this new low-power DPharp transmitter, Yokogawa aims to expand its control business and achieve the targets set out in its Evolution 2015 plan.

Differential pressure/pressure transmitters are widely used in the oil, petrochemical, and chemical industries to measure the pressure, flow rate, and level of liquid, gas, and steam. They can be found both in plants and in the field, at locations such as oil and gas wells.  Thanks to the global rise in demand for energy, oil and gas resources are being actively developed. As technological progress in recent years has made it possible to develop and produce oil and gas in places with poor infrastructure (such as electricity and communications), instruments and devices in such areas must be able to function on a limited power supply from solar power or batteries.

Manufacturers can monitor and protect machinery at a lower total cost of ownership with the Allen-Bradley Dynamix 1444 Series monitors from Rockwell Automation.  The new integrated condition-monitoring system allows manufacturers to leverage the Rockwell Automation Integrated Architecture system, rather than an isolated condition-monitoring device, to assess current equipment health, predict potential issues, and help avoid damage to critical machinery. Integration of machinery health into control architectures using a standard Ethernet TCP/IP EtherNet/IP network brings unprecedented flexibility to machine instrumentation design and operational efficiency on the manufacturing floor.

“Industrial producers need a device that performs the full scope of protection and condition monitoring, and the Dynamix 1444 monitor does that while improving the ease of use and cost of such monitoring,” said Pat Carle, product manager, Rockwell Automation. “The monitors can serve a broad range of applications because they are massively configurable.”

Primarily used as a machinery protection system for rotating and reciprocating equipment, Dynamix 1444 monitors supervise critical operating parameters in real time. They also provide operations and maintenance personnel with the information to assess current equipment health and perform predictive-maintenance planning.

To protect equipment, the Dynamix 1444 device measures and monitors a machine’s critical dynamic and position parameters, and assures appropriate actions are performed with the precision, reliability and performance required by industry and regulatory standards.

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Yokogawa Electric Corporation announces that Takaharu Matsumoto, a Yokogawa employee, has received the 2014 International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) 1906 Award. The IEC presents this award to those who have made a great contribution in its development of standards for electrical and electronic technologies. In 2014, 151 experts from 21 countries were commended, of whom 31 were Japanese. Mr. Matsumoto is the second winner from Yokogawa. The award was presented to him on October 14.

As an industrial instrument specialist, Mr. Matsumoto participated in IEC TC65, an IEC technical committee in charge of the development of standards for industrial-process measurement and control, and was involved in developing the IEC 61987 series, an international standard for industrial measuring instruments. He received this award for his contribution in developing the specification description (list of properties: LOP) for the IEC 61987 series and managing the standard by working together with various device-specific committees.  Yokogawa will continue to be involved in international standardization activities related to measurement and control.

Kepware Technologies, a software development company focused on communications for automation, today announced the release of KEPServerEX version 5.16. The release features the new Industrial Data Forwarder (IDF) for Splunk Plug-In, Local Historian Plug-In, and IEC 60870-5 Suite that expand Kepware’s offerings for the Power, Manufacturing, and Oil & Gas industries.

KEPServerEX V5.16 advances Big Data analytics and the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) with the new IDF for Splunk Plug-In. Splunk (NASDAQ:SPLK) software and cloud services allow organizations to search, monitor, analyze, and visualize machine-generated big data from websites, applications, servers, networks, sensors, and mobile devices. Kepware’s plug-in leverages the 150+ communication drivers available with KEPServerEX to seamlessly stream real-time industrial sensor and machine data directly into the Splunk software platform for real-time Operational Intelligence. Splunk users can now easily mine industrial data to improve operations, accelerate troubleshooting, perform preventative maintenance, and improve productivity.

Storing industrial automation data for on-site and future analysis is critical, but can be a challenge for many organizations. Available now with KEPServerEX V5.16, the Local Historian Plug-In captures historical information at the point of collection in an easy to configure, flexible, open, and cost-effective solution. It enables data collection, storage, and access at the data source to prevent data loss and improve operational efficiency.

Furthermore, KEPServerEX V5.16 introduces significant advancements to the Power Suite. The new IEC 60870-5-101 and IEC 60870-5-104 drivers bring increased speed and connectivity to IEC 60870-5 devices in electrical substations that include RTUs, IEDs, controllers, and gateways. The IEC 60870-5 drivers work in conjunction with KEPServerEX to provide connectivity and communications with HMI, SCADA, and Historian client applications. The new drivers are expected to have the greatest impact in Europe and Asia where IEC 60870-5-101 and EIC60870-5-104 are the primary substation automation protocols.

"KEPServerEX V5.16 is one of our most significant releases," said Tony Paine, CEO, Kepware. "Our new products enable existing customers to meet the need for greater operational efficiency—and they also open doors to new industries that are ready to leverage industrial data. Operations Technology (OT) and Information Technology (IT) are merging together to enable wider accessibility and greater integration of information. We believe it's a trend that will continue."

Kepware also recently released enhancements to LinkMaster and RedundancyMaster, allowing users to easily exchange data between OPC DA servers and configure multiple OPC servers into redundant pairs, respectively.