Project 7129 was about upgrading DCS, ESD (Emergency shutdown) and F&G (Fire and Gas detection System) of an oil offshore platform with zero plant downtime.

Existing control system in the platform includes, three Redundant Set of ABB Advant AC450 in DCS and two sets of Dual Safegaurd in ESD and F&G system and five ADVA command operator consoles.

Increased risk of system failure, inefficient operation, increased cost of maintenance and increasing risk of safety incident, all these issues and also necessity for new automatic reporting and archiving for long time process data directed the customer to an upgrading solutions.

The platform located far-from-shore and shutting down the wells was risky and expensive ,well shutdown has impact on wells and in some case even returning to normal production after shutdown takes some days. The best solution for them was a bumpless upgrading HMI monitoring system to ABB latest updated 800xA technology with zero platform downtime.

We built a 800xA network in parallel by Advant network Masterbus and connect these two networks by dual ABB external gateway PU410 RTA board. They could supervise and test new 800xA system while they were operating the process through ADVA command.

There were lots of advantage in this solution, the operators had on-job training, they could test new monitoring options and advanced feature in 800xA. 100% of control loops tested multiple times in real operation situation and all defect that the customer could find got fixed before removing old monitoring system. 

Anything out of control panels replaced by new modern products, two redundant hp DL380 server as redundant Aspect connectivity servers and five new dual screen industrial workstation from Advantech installed as operator and engineering station.

After removing old workstation, a convertor from Moxa installed on communication module of control cabinets to replace old coaxial network devices, switches and cable of masterbus network by CAT5 cable and Ethernet switches .

We also installed dual 800xA Information manager system for reporting and archiving process data for long period.

Our reputation in retrofit and upgrading control system by different technology in multiple industries enabled us to have good inventory of used and surplus old control system parts to support our customers that still want to save their legacy systems.  

If you want to modernize your control system and are worry about your plant downtime, Please contact us.