Exactly 170 years have passed since the world’s first oil refinery opened in 1853.

As an ancient but constantly developing and innovative basic industry, the oil refining industry has experienced a transformation process from the initial lighting oil, automotive/aviation fuel use, to the current chemical oriented refining and chemical integration. During this period, different processes such as atmospheric and vacuum distillation, catalytic cracking, delayed coking, and hydrocracking, while innovating their own iterative processes, also gave birth to a new revolution in automation and digital technology from computer control to PLC, DCS and today’s integrated refinery.

pxie-5164 In fact, from oil refining and chemical industry to power, steel, building materials, nuclear power, medicine and even the emerging green hydrogen green ammonia, electrolytic aluminum and other typical process industries, the process automation and digital innovation around the process are undergoing rapid changes. Refining represents the complex process industry, we will start from the refining industry, to look at the entire process industry innovation and integrated solutions.

The ultimate pursuit of “stable overgrowth”

In the refining and chemical industry, with the slowdown in demand for refined oil products, “control of refining and increasing”, prolific chemicals, and improving processing depth have long been the new normal of the development of the global refining and chemical integration model, and are also the main strategic choices for today’s refining and chemical enterprises to optimize resource allocation, reduce production costs, and increase added value. This mode not only means the closely integrated process design of mutual supply of raw materials and products, closed-loop utilization of energy and sharing of public facilities, but also brings the complexity of the process and the large-scale and large-scale of the device.

In order to continuously pursue the ultimate goal of “stable and excellent” operation of large-scale integrated process equipment (i.e. safe production, stable product quality, long cycle operation of equipment, full load production and optimized operation), refining and chemical enterprises need to change in a series of links such as automation engineering design and delivery, instrumentation, control, operation, maintenance, equipment management, and public works. In the case of the most core control and safety systems, the change challenges to be addressed include:

(1) Higher security: In order to ensure the safety of large and complex integrated production processes, pxie-5164 DCS and SIS systems need to have higher security features, such as redundant design, security interlocking, fault tolerance and fail-safe mechanisms, and even the ability to cope with the information security risks brought about by an increasing number of IT applications.

(2) Stronger stability: due to the fluctuation of the operation of large integrated devices, DCS and SIS systems need to go through strict testing and verification from system design concept to network communication, from software to physical hardware, to ensure its stability and reliability under various working conditions.

(3) Longer service cycle: In order to achieve long cycle operation, DCS and SIS systems need to fully consider the reliability of the system in the design and implementation process, such as the use of redundant design, modular structure, excellent equipment alarm management and scientific operation and maintenance methods based on big data.

(4) Higher device load rate: the concept of “stable overgrowth” emphasizes full load operation, and for the integrated refining process, the DCS system needs to have high-performance controllers and servers to ensure the real-time and response speed of the system.

(5) Better optimization operation: large-scale integrated refining and chemical units are usually composed of multiple process units, the strong coupling and nonlinear characteristics between various control variables increase the complexity and difficulty of operation, and there may be mutual constraints between multiple objectives that need to be optimized, such as maximizing output, minimizing energy consumption, maximizing profits, etc., and the “card operation” requires higher requirements.

In addition, in order to save resources and energy, the optimization process is also committed to meet the strict low-carbon environmental protection requirements, if the power automation and control system can be well integrated, it can better optimize energy saving and monitor and avoid failures caused by the power supply system.

pxie-5164 Accumulated, complete process integration solution

Based on the open EcoStruxure™️ architecture and platform, Schneider Electric provides a very comprehensive process automation and digital solutions for many process industries such as refining and chemical industry, power industry, food industry, pharmaceutical industry, green hydrogen and green ammonia industry. It mainly covers EcoStruxure Foxboro process instrument, EcoStruxure Foxboro DCS distributed control system, EcoStruxure Tricon CX Safety instrumentation system solutions, EcoStruxure consulting software, and pxie-5164 AVEVA full life cycle solutions, while meeting the process industry’s stable and optimal operational objectives, drive the industry towards a more open, efficient and resilient, sustainable and people-oriented industry of the future.

(1) Innovative advantages of EcoStruxure Foxboro DCS system

Foxboro DCS was born in 1987 after more than 30 years of iteration and practical application verification, its hardware, software and communication network has always been around the “long life structure” design idea, backward compatibility, and constantly adopt new technology to improve, its innovative characteristics are mainly reflected in the openness of the system, reliability and technical advancement.

Whether it is the core controller down to various process instrument bus protocols, Ethernet bus or serial bus or even based on IEC61850 distribution system connection protocol support, or upward based on open protocols to connect to the production network, or even cloud-based engineering development, FAT testing, pxie-5164 SAT testing, The openness of EcoStruxure Foxboro DCS is evolving with The Times.

In terms of reliability, the EcoStruxure Foxboro DCS provides multiple redundant communication networks, redundant power supply systems, alternate operating stations, redundant fault-tolerant control processors, and network security from individual components to the entire system to ensure continuous system operation.

The EcoStruxure Foxboro DCS controller has complex computing capabilities such as self-tuning and multivariable self-tuning. The software supports virtualization technology, provides dynamic awareness screen HMI, and provides remote access to the system through remote system management and system diagnosis packages. As well as AVEVA APC advanced process control software brought deep optimization capabilities, all well reflect the advanced nature of the system.