SCADA System for Oil Refinery Control

CATEGORY: PROCESS CONTROL
Measurement, Available online 28 August 2013, In Press, Accepted Manuscript
SCADA System for Oil Refinery Control
Iman Morsi, Loay Mohy El-Din
Arab Academy for Science and Technology, Faculty of Engineering, Electronics and Communication Department, Alexandria, Egypt
Abstract
Oil and gas refineries typically use a Distributed Control System (DCS) to provide all process and equipment control functionality. Authors describe use of a SCADA/PLC system to control an entire oil refinery as an alternative to conventional control through DCS.
The refinery is composed of of four main units: a crude oil storage unit, a crude oil pretreatment unit, a distillation unit and products storage/ dispatch unit. The output products from the refinery consist of Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG), Naphtha, Gasoline, Kerosene and Diesel. Multipoint Interface/ Decentralized Peripherals (MPI/DP) connection in main control loop is used instead of Ethernet connection because MPI/DP speed is 185kbps and Ethernet connection speed is 10/100kbps. This increases the data transfer speed of the system. Displacer level transmitters and automatic servo level gauging transmitters are used for measuring levels in the crude oil refinery process. In addition, differential pressure flow transmitters are used for measuring flow rate. Temperature transmitters with thermocouple temperature elements are used for temperature control. Construction of a highly stable and reliable SCADA/ PLC system results in automatic management and control of the oil refinery process, avoiding the waste of manpower and physical resources.
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