Wireless LAN system at petrochemical plant

Belden Australia Pty Ltd
Thursday, 17 March, 2011

Shell Eastern Petroleum Ltd (SEPL) has recently completed its Ethylene Cracker Complex (ECC) as part of its Houdini project on the island of Pulau Bukom, Singapore. The full project included modifications and additions to the existing Bukom refinery.

One of the key features of the project is that this is a deployment of wireless technology in an oil and gas environment to get secure mobile access to process control systems. Shell wanted to get mobile access to all process data via WLAN at defined places in the refinery to drive efficiencies. Significant benefits include improved overall efficiency, resulting from both the faster commissioning time for the petrochemical process control system and improved maintenance efficiency, as well as an overall system cost reduction, due to fewer local panel units being needed.

Working closely with the main automation contractor Yokogawa, the Belden team took on the project management, design and building of a complete WLAN solution, consisting of a wireless distribution system incorporating 90 Hirschmann BAT54-F X2 access points with multiple antennas, linked across a redundant, fibre ring backbone. A very important feature in this project was that all relevant parts of the solution had to be properly certified to comply with ATEX/IEC60079. To have such a certification is mandatory for safety and governance reasons.

Hajo Finkbeiner, Belden senior consultant, says: “We were able to provide Shell, and our partner Yokogawa, with a one-stop-shop solution for WLAN and firewall technology with a redundant backbone structure. This comprised hardware and software, as well as a full range of services including consulting, planning, maintenance, site survey, training and configuration of all devices, to the commissioning and testing of the entire system at various stages, prior to handing over the entire system to the end customer.”

Tsjoi Tsim, Consultant, Wireless Technologies, acting on behalf of Shell Global Solutions International, explains: “Following our vision to create a wireless network-enabled plant, it was essential that we identified the right partners. Throughout our selection process, a few potential partners were willing to listen but only one, Belden, was capable of delivering the right solution by successfully listening to what the customer has to say and to act accordingly to it.

“From our initial discussions, it was clear that Belden was able to offer us the right industrial networking products. However, to ensure that these would be allowed to be operated in a demanding and hazardous environment, each part needed to be properly certified to IEC 60079 first. To meet this need, Belden took the initiative to develop from scratch the right products, able to meet the required standards, bearing in mind that the plant, once it is finished, will have to operate for 30 or 40 years at least.”

The Belden project team started in 2007, planning the overall system at the Belden Competence Center in Neckartenzlingen. It was here that the first factory acceptance test was conducted, involving the construction and operation of the whole system. The test proved successful and, with Shell’s approval, the entire set-up was moved to Singapore for the integrated factory acceptance test, to ensure that the system functioned as a seamless part of Yokogawa’s control system. Again this test proved successful. Finally, the whole system was transported to the plant on Bukom Island and, after completing a final site acceptance test, was handed over to the customer.

Peter Beerepoot, who was responsible for instrumentation and process control for the entire Houdini project for Shell Eastern Petrochemicals, says: “Our initial thoughts, during the front-end engineering and design phase, were that wireless would give us a number of key benefits. So we considered substitution of local panels, which we believed would bring us advantages in terms of cost reduction and increased efficiency. However, it is always difficult to test a new system in an existing plant. Here we were given the opportunity to develop a complete infrastructure. Today, we not only have the proof that the Belden system works, because the coverage is better than we originally expected, we are now looking at options to maximise our usage of the system.”