Hima-Sella starts UK refinery upgrade

Stockport, UK – Under a circa £1.75-million contract, Hima-Sella has commenced work on a site-wide PLC upgrade programme for a major UK refinery.

This follows the unnamed customer’s acceptance of the supplier’s remote I/O and network box designs, to be used for the programme, said Hima-Sella, which is also project managing the complete supply-chain for the project.

At the site, a HIMA HIMax unit will act as a combined data concentrator and large PLC, communicating with around 100 network boxes distributed over three fibre-optic control loops.

Each network box will then interface with up to 12 Remote I/O boxes, which in turn will have 25 channels for physically interfacing with motorised valves, switches, sensors and other hardware.

The HIMax unit at the heart of the new PLC network is a ‘programmable electronic system’ (PES) – HIMA’s platform for large, critical production processes.

At the refinery, the unit will be the focal data point for the site’s Honeywell EPKS distributed control system (DCS). It will process an anticipated 20,000 channels of data, with scope for expansion, and delivering a complete loop response time of less than one second; from field initiation to DCS transmission.

Also key to the upgrade programme is the requirement to use off-the-shelf hardware around the site and open-standard communication media protocols – namely Ethernet and Modbus.

The installation work is being done ‘live’ in that small local areas shut down for a few hours at a time while the remote I/O and network boxes are migrated to take the place of legacy, standalone PLCs.

This, said Hima Sella, is possible due to HIMax providing uninterrupted system operation while still accommodating changes, additions, maintenance and even proof tests..