Emerson Exchange 365

To improve the maintenance of critical valves and instrumentation at their Gdańsk refinery, Grupa LOTOS implemented an advanced asset management system from Emerson Process Management. The new system has been integrated with existing third-party DCS systems, some of which did not offer HART capability. By providing online predictive maintenance functionality, automated documentation and remote monitoring, the new system has enabled significant improvements in the refinery’s maintenance strategy, and a significant reduction in manual tasks.

The Grupa LOTOS Gdańsk refinery is the second largest in Poland and the most modern. This follows a €1.43 billion investment programme, which is the largest in Poland during the last decade. The modernisation has enabled processing capability to be increased from 6 million tonnes of crude oil to 10.5 million tonnes annually.

Maciej Baryła, Instrumentation Engineer within the Grupa LOTOS refinery Instrumentation Maintenance Planning and Supervision Department explained that complementing this modernisation project, they have successfully implemented an online monitoring and predictive maintenance strategy for control valves. This strategy has also been expanded to include other key assets/instrumentation.

“We wanted to implement an on-line system to provide monitoring and predictive diagnostics for critical instruments within all five units of the refinery. The key driver for the project was the need to automate the diagnostics and status documenting, helping to improve valve maintenance,” said Baryła.

The new monitoring system would provide continuous data, including alarms and alerts, simple visualisation and time stamping. Because of the large size of the plant, there was a need for remote monitoring to help eliminate manual operations and the use of hand held devices. Advanced functions such as partial stroke testing were required for both control and SIS valves, as well as tracking of current and historical alarms and configuration changes.

A critical part of the project was the ability of the new system to integrate with various legacy DCS systems. The units are controlled by two types of third-party DCS systems. The older DCSs were unable to provide the HART I/O required, but a single integrated monitoring system was required that would work with both the older and newer DCSs.

Having identified the critical control valves, Grupa LOTOS and Emerson worked together to design and implement the monitoring solution. Grupa LOTOS performed extensive testing of Emerson’s AMS Suite: Intelligent Device Manager and the native FDM software supplied with the new DCS. After a trial period they decided to build the predictive maintenance tools around Emerson’s AMS Suite: Intelligent Device Manager and its SNAP-ON applications that expand the diagnostic power and provide advanced functionality for specialised applications.

AMS Suite provides one unified tool for the predictive maintenance of the control valves and measurement instruments with one server and five client stations distributed across the refinery. Now the valve specialist can easily monitor the valve, perform the diagnostic and plan any maintenance activities.

To overcome the lack of HART I/O provided by the older DCSs, the devices controlled by these systems have been equipped with HART multiplexers to connect directly to the AMS server. Software integration between the AMS server and FDM server has been established using the FDM HART multiplexer. Now Grupa LOTOS has one tool for predictive maintenance for the both new and older parts of the refinery. Piotr Burgs, Key Account Manager for Refining at Emerson provided an overview of AMS Suite capability and an insight into the integration demands such as the need to keep within the internal IT security standards.

“The modernisation project enabled the refinery to almost double annual production, but without doubling the number of maintenance staff. An added benefit of the new online system is the capability to reduce the amount of manual tasks, many of which can now be performed remotely,” said Baryła.

Having extended the online diagnostic capability to other instruments, an example was provided as to how this functionality has helped to identify a potential flow measurement problem caused by entrained gas within diesel stream.

Burgs concluded the presentation by highlighting Grupa LOTOS’s use of Emerson’s Fisher Installed Base Tool, a web-based tool that is helping them to manage their valves assets.