India: Petrochemicals
Field Comm Group Names Mangalore Refinery Plant of the Year
| Editor: Alexander Stark
Field Comm Group announced that Mangalore Refinery and Petrochemical Limited (MRPL), located in Mangalore, India, has been named the Field Comm Group 2018 Plant of the Year.
Austin/USA — This annual award is presented by the group to recognize the people, companies and plant sites around the globe that are using the advanced capabilities of Foundation Fieldbus, Hart and Wireless Hart technology in real-time applications for improved operations, maintenance and asset productivity. This is the first time ever that a process facility located in India has been awarded this award.
The group stated that the culture of “doing things better” had been an integral part of MRPL and close coordination between the many disciplines (C&I, Projects, Process Operations, etc.) had enabled them to be industry leaders in utilizing the information provided by smart devices which had led them to be selected as the 2018 Plant of the Year.
According to B. Sudarshan, Chief General Manager of Instrumentation & Electrical at MRPL, Foundation Fieldbus technology provided a 50 % saving with I/Os, cabling, maintenance utilization and installation costs when compared to conventional installations — saving $ 6,600,000 in project costs alone.
In addition to hard cost savings in infrastructure and maintenance time, MRPL continues to receive savings in averted shutdowns and interruptions, the company announced in a statement. In one instance where an unexpected shutdown would have occurred due to valve fault, valve positioner diagnostics identified an issue that allowed MRPL to avoid shutting down Hydrogen generation — saving $ 60,000 in startup and shutdown costs associated with fuel and energy loss.
Sudarshan continued that open standards had enabled the refinery to derive value in many different scenarios throughout the entire plant. For example, Hart is enabled in their Safety Systems that allowed for Partial Stroke Testing — avoiding the necessity to completely shut down. Control in the Field provided by Foundation Fieldbus allowed MRPL to operate even in the event of critical hardware failure. In 2016, thanks to Control in the Field, the company had been able to keep their refinery processing running during a DCS upgrade that otherwise would have required a shutdown resulting in a production loss of $ 800,000, the Chief General Manager said.
