Schneider Electric Maximizes Safety In Oil And Gas Process Plants
Schneider Electric has presented new and innovative solutions to help customers involved in oil and gas meet challenges to increase productivity and reduce operating costs without compromising environmental concerns or safety.
The company has an established track record helping customers to get the most from their energies and optimise performance through combined energy management, integral security and safety.
"What we mean by 'maximizing safety' is the way our solution, which is based on safety PLCs and safety systems, maintains secure operating conditions at critical sites," says Jean-Luc Eschbach, Oil and Gas Solutions Director, Schneider Electric.
"In installations where a failure can cause severe consequences for people, processes and the environment, only safety PLCs can be relied upon to effectively monitor and supervise the status of a process and properly react in case of unforeseen events. Although normally in a dormant state, safety PLCs are embedded with powerful diagnostics and perform regular auto-tests to ensure they are always ready to respond in an emergency," Eschbach added.
To meet the demanding needs of critical sites, and provide availability and safety to both personnel and machines, Schneider Electric has developed integrated architectures to cover various applications such as emergency shut down systems (ESD), fire and gas systems (F&G), burner management systems (BMS) and boiler protection. These solutions are based on Quantum Safety PLC, dedicated primarily to revamp or extend existing sites for the Oil and Gas Industry.
The Quantum Safety PLC ensures a high level of both safety and availability. Its Hot Stand-By architecture increases system dependability and its powerful diagnostics contribute to an extended mean time between failures (MTBF). Overall, the unique design of the Quantum Safety PLC, using microprocessor diversity and Hot/Standby features, makes it inherently secure by avoiding common mode failures. It makes migration from control system to safety loops very cost effective with user-friendly tools which are designed to easily mix safety modules with non interfering control modules, even in the same racks.
Schneider Electric is developing a unique solution based on the Quantum Safety PLC for the Offshore Industry. This solution, aimed at medium-size drilling or production platforms, consists of an integrated and embedded ESD process, F&G systems and building fire systems to monitor and automatically initiate the appropriate action in case of any fire and gas hazards on the platform. Any such incident or unexpected event is stored in a sequence of events file, reported to the security and control room and dynamically displayed on a CITECT HMI (Human Machine Interface) device. Secure power is supplied via a GUTOR hardened and redundant UPS, and some of the instrumentation is taken from the TAC/PELCO line of products.
"The new safety solution based on Quantum Safety PLC underlines our ability to meet Oil and Gas customers' requirements," said Jean-Luc Eschbach. "With wide-ranging expertise in PLCs as well as in safety, Schneider Electric is able to manage complex turnkey projects. We master the entire process from the hazards and operability (Hazop) studies by our Projects and Engineering Centre, through the design and engineering of complex solutions, all the way to the commissioning and maintenance of friendly architectures for safety integrated systems."