Fieldbus lays down firm foundations
15 Jan 2000
A Foundation Fieldbus network has been started up smoothly at Syncrude Canada's research centre in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, according to Honeywell who installed the system.
Syncrude Canada is the largest operator in the Alberta oil sands, operating two oil sands mines, a utilities plant, and a bitumen extraction and upgrading facility to produce the high quality, light, sweet crude oil known as Syncrude Sweet Blend.
The Honeywell system installed at the Syncrude facility consists of a Scan 3000 Windows NT control system, a Fieldbus configurator, and ST 3000 smart pressure transmitters. Later phases of the project will add more Honeywell fieldbus-compatible instruments including temperature transmitters, magnetic flowmeters, gas chromatographs and smart valve controllers, as well as compatible components from other instrument manufacturers.
In addition to the actual host supervisory system and fieldbus instruments, Honeywell helped in engineering, planning and implementing the project. Syncrude believes that effective deployment of the Foundation Fieldbus technology will bring substantial business advantages through higher quality information from field devices.
