Galp alert to alarms
15 May 2007
Portuguese oil & gas company Galp Energia Group is carrying out a major programme of alarm analysis and rationalisation across all plants at its Oporto refinery — following the success of an earlier alarms project at the site.
The Oporto refinery has an annual production setup comprising: Fuels 3,700 ktpa; lube oils 150 ktpa; aromatics and solvents 440 ktpa; lubricants 1.5 ktpa; paraffins 10 ktpa; asphalt 150 ktpa; and sulphur 10 ktpa.
Since implementing a Fisher Rosemount DCS in 1991, alarms at the refinery have been configured in three levels: hardware, system and process. Alarms at the first two levels are generated automatically by the DCS, while the latter are defined by those responsible for each area and configured by the process control and automation (PC&A) team.
Alarms were configured without overall rationalisation and without a tool to collect and analyse them and find redundancies between them. This resulted in over 5,000 tags configured with alarms — each tag can have around six alarms —a number that grew along with each new project.
As the DCS was unable to store alarms for a long period of time, specific alarms had to be searched for by hand in a log file running to hundreds of pages.
Before the implementation of an alarm-management project, operators were forced into a reactive approach, especially during upsets like maintenance or emergency shutdowns. Operators were dealing in some cases with five alarms per operator every 10 minutes - compared to the EEMUA standard of one alarm per operator per 10-minute interval.
The Oporto PC&A team identified two ways in which a solution could be found: A system embedded in the new DeltaV DCS to which the facility was migrating in 2005, or a separate system for alarm management.
The company chose the second option, in order to be able to manage alarms for both DCSs in a consistent manner and to add a degree of independence to the system, as it would be used as an important tool to analyse incidents.
Engineers opted to install a Matrikon ProcessGuard and also bought the alarm MOCCA (Management of Change Configuration Assistant) package during implementation.
The system had to provide detailed analysis of all alarms, operator responses and active alarm durations and could integrate alarms and events with process data, said Lluvet Santos, who led Oporto’s PC&A team. It also had to produce KPI reports based on EEMUA standards and be a common tool in the refinery and easy to maintain.
Alarm rationalisation is being carried out by PC&A team and plant management with almost 500 tags analysed since March 2006. The process has been slower than expected, however, as all shifts have to analyse the conclusions of each alarm-rationalisation meeting.
With operators that have never attended a meeting, “we begin with a short presentation of the present alarm situation in their plant, our objectives, the tools to help achieve the objectives and our “MOCCA sheet” where we register all the alarms, causes and consequences of each alarm configured,” said Santos.
Data from the aromatics (FAR) and water treatment (ETAR) plants show that performance levels went from stable/reactive to robust in four months, with 261 tags rationalised.
“Our goal for 2007 is to rationalise all tags with alarms in the refinery, with the expectation of similar results to those achieved in the FAR/ETAR plants,” concluded Santos.
Emerson Process Management is to automate two 300-MW units for a new coal-fired power plant in north Vietnam. The facility in the Thuy Nguyen district is owned by Hai Phong Thermal Power Joint Stock Co.
EPC contractor Dongfang Electric Corp. selected Emerson to install its PlantWeb digital plant architecture with the Ovation expert control system in units 1 and 2 of the Hai Phong project. Emerson’s Power & Water Solutions industry centre is to coordinate and supervise the project.
Unit 1 is due to start up in June 2008, with unit 2 expected to go into service six months later. The plant will eventually comprise four 300-MW coal-fired units making it the largest coal-fired power generation facility in Vietnam.
Emerson’s contract includes deployment of its Ovation control system for data acquisition, as well as for monitoring and control of the sequence control system, furnace safeguard supervisory system, and electrical control system for all major plant components. This, it said, will involve installing 36 redundant controllers and 26 workstations to manage more than 24,000 I/O points.
The vendor is also to provide asset management software for each unit, which will provide operators with data from HART intelligent field devices located throughout the plant.
“Hai Phong units 1 and 2 mark the beginning of what we hope will be a long and mutually beneficial relationship with Dongfang Electric Group,” said Bob Yeager, president of Emerson’s Power & Water Solutions division.
