The industrial environments in the oil and gas industry impose some of the most severe working conditions on active devices and network media imaginable. At one time or another, the signalling components at these facilities will have to withstand the destructive effects of temperature extremes, humidity, moisture, dust, mud, oil, and the potentially corrosive effects of solvent chemicals. Then, add ultraviolet radiation caused by extensive sunlight, electromagnetic interference and the ever-present danger of fire and explosion.
An on-going and critical concern for the oil, gas and petrochemical industries is the reliable and continuing flow of signals in the presence of factors that can shut down production flow. In fact, an enormous amount of information is generated in these industries, including data from spreadsheets, maps, daily drilling results, reports, charts, and manuals, to name a few. Uncorrupted data has to be reliably available to devices and users throughout the system. But, to process the massive amounts of data, an enormous amount of reliable bandwidth from Ethernet networks is demanded; meaning the physical components of the system must be robust enough to survive field operations. Keep in mind that if an Ethernet switch or a cabling system fails in a mission-critical environment, the real price will be far more than just the replacement cost of the components – it will possibly mean unplanned downtime, an increased risk of repetitive repairs and a lowering of the level of safety at the facility.
Disruptions in the flow of information or of control signals in networks might even mean delays in oil recovery. To ensure that information flows reliably when and where it needs to, Hirschmann offers its products for hardened networks – all specially engineered and matched to outperform in harsh environments. In the oil industry, Hirschmann’s products excel:
* In the upstream stages, for example the offshore or onshore areas associated with exploration, extraction and production of crude oil or natural gas.
* In the mid-to-downstream stages, for example in pipelines, tank farms and at refineries.
* At pipelines, compressor stations, LNG plants and gas-to-liquid processing.
* At tanker transports and loading and unloading terminals.
* In the refining and petrochemical industry, these industrial solutions excel from the separation systems to the production plants — and everywhere in between.
Putting it all together in practice
Hirschmann has also demonstrated that it offers a complete solution for scalable, redundant LAN and WLAN architectures. Shell Eastern Petroleum recently completed a new ethylene cracker complex in Singapore. This is the first time in the oil and gas industry that wireless technology has been deployed to get mobile access to the process control system. Belden took on the project management, the design and building of a complete WLAN solution, consisting of a wireless distribution system incorporating 90 Hirschmann access points (BAT54-F X2) for ECC and multiple antennas, linked across a redundant, fibre ring backbone. A very important feature in this project was that all relevant parts of the solution had to be suitable for the challenging environmental conditions and had to be properly certified accordingly to comply to ATEX/IEC60079. To have such certification is mandatory for safety and governance reasons. Therefore this unique location has to be regarded as being a hazardous area.
The application required a full range of Hirschman WLAN products including outdoor access points and modular Mice switches, together with accessories, antennas, switches, media converters and surge arrestors. For enhanced security, the Hirschmann Eagle firewall was used at the demarcation point to the customer’s process-LAN. To build the backbone, Belden’s Profinet copper and fibre optic cables were used. At locations where wired LAN access was difficult, wireless point to point links were installed.
This project is now fully operational. Significant benefits include improved overall efficiency resulting from both the faster commissioning time for the petrochemical process control system and improved maintenance efficiency, as well as an overall system cost reduction due to fewer indicator units being required.
For more information contact Raine Sadie, IAC, +27 (0)12 657 3600, [email protected], www.iaconline.co.za
| Tel: | +27 12 657 3600 |
| Fax: | +27 12 657 3630 |
| Email: | [email protected] |
| www: | www.iacontrol.co.za |
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