In safety-critical industries like nuclear, petrochemical and oil and gas, installing a new industrial cable network is an extremely complicated task. For example, in nuclear, digging a cable trench involves excessive cost, often in the millions, and vast amounts of paperwork, making the process take months if not years to complete. Gary Bradshaw, a director of industrial network specialist, Omniflex explains why this is often unnecessary as plants are likely to have existing cabling capable of being used to create new industrial networks. This can benefit waste management and ESG commitments.
Typically, the nuclear industry has significant networking requirements, carrying data for everything from radiation monitors, other process sensors and perimeter alarms across large facilities and sites. However, digging a new trench to install a cable network in line with updating requirements is a major nuisance and cost, as all the materials that have been disturbed must be radiation tested and carefully disposed of as hazardous waste. Risk assessments and method statements to determine how the new trench will impact radiation protection across the site must also be written up, making the process even more complicated.
The petrochemical and oil and gas sectors have similar challenges. With the continuous presence of flammable or explosive materials on site, it is not a straightforward matter to just start digging new trenches and cable structures to install cable networks.Therefore, to save costs and minimise operational disruptions, these industries must find an alternative way of installing new networks across their sites.
Furthermore, these industries often come under the spotlight when it comes to sustainability because of the well-documented environmental risks they inherently involve. Therefore, it is important that any systems installed are as sustainable as possible to offset this and to help meet industry sustainability targets.
The importance of ESG in industry
ESG commitments and good waste management practices are becoming increasingly important for plant owners and operators in sectors including nuclear, petrochemical and oil and gas. These measures are used to drive sustainable and responsible business operations while enhancing long-term value.
Strong ESG practices help mitigate environmental damages such as unnecessary waste and climate change impacts, protect workers against undue safety risks, and promote transparent, data-driven decision making. Furthermore, ESG initiatives align operations with global sustainability goals, reinforcing a commitment to preserving resources and fostering resilience in critical infrastructure.
How CONET networks support ESG and waste management
You wouldn’t build a new highway every time you needed to drive somewhere new, so why install new cables when your industrial network needs to reach somewhere new? The chances are you have spares cores in pre-existing multi-core cables in your network or spares cores in your old telephone network cables that were never removed.
CONET, which Omniflex first developed in 1981, is a true token-passing peer-to-peer local area network. One of CONET’s defining features is its ability to operate on a free pair of low-cost cabling that, in many instances, is already available in an existing multi-core or telephone cable. CONET works regardless of your existing cabling setup because it’s not reliant on any particular topology. In fact, it can work in any configuration, from bus and star networks to redundant-link and ring topologies.
Despite its simplicity in engineering, CONET is based on the ISO OSI 7-layer model and is compliant with global networking standards- including those specific to key industry sectors.
For example, CONET has been used on sites across the UK’s nuclear sector and has helped save millions in cable costs alone along the way. When Sellafield nuclear plant needed a new network that would have involved digging up a car park and millions in costs and significant disruptions to operations, Omniflex stepped in. After carrying out a site survey, it was determined that the network could be created in full using CONET over their existing cabling. This helped Sellafield achieve its goals faster than anticipated, while saving over £1m and minimising operational disruptions.
In the modern industrial landscape, where good waste management practices and ESG reporting are becoming increasingly important to businesses worldwide, CONET can be exploited to help.
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