Ultra fine tuning

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Intelligent instrumentation solutions can actually reduce maintenance bills and help reduce unplanned shutdowns.

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Instrumentation can account for up to 5% of plant costs.

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Thanks to reduced installation costs, wireless automation and process control equipment has seen huge interest in the region.

Understanding every measurement and process in your plant is the key to efficient operations. PME brings you the leading vendors of process control instrumentation.

In an industry still widely regarded as conservative in its attitude to new technologies, it may be a surprise that innovative new developments in instrumentation used by the petrochemical industry is rapidly adopted by the region's leading plant owners.

Of course, running any downstream plant requires a wealth of instruments, and the nature of the goods processed means  petrochemical industries place extremely high accuracy requirements on a wide variety of measurements and controls. Everything from level measurement, flow control, product quality monitoring, and industrial security and safety are being more rigorously applied in the industry.

The key companents common to most downstream plants incorporate flow meters, pressure transmitters, level meters, temperature instruments, and analysis instruments. All of this instrumentation aims to maintain the stability of the plant and deliver improved operational performance as well as ensuring the safety of plant employees.

"We manufacture and design an extensive range of reliable, highly accurate and extremely high quality products relating to the measurement and generation of temperature," explains Chris Chant, business development manager at Okazaki Manufacturing Company.

"We manufactur mineral insulated thermocouple and RTD cable which is the first building block of industrial temperature sensors," he adds.

The utilisation of instruments at any petrochemical plant typically begins with a consultancy study and engineering services, which are deployed from the earliest phases of the project to ensure the optimum performance of the instrument. "Beginning with consulting and engineering services during the very early phases of a project, through to core automation, fire and gas systems and  manufacturing execution systems (MES), our instruments can truly fill almost every need of the petrochemical manufacturing process," says Connie Evans, sales director, Honeywell, Middle East.

Wireless technologies have became more widely instaled as it is safer and cost effective. "Many of our systems employ wireless technology that provide our customers with a cost effective, easily expandable network that allows access to data that was previously too costly to retrieve," he adds.

Middle East Market

The rapidly growing industry in the Middle East has led the instrumentation industry to grow at the same pace. Demand on instrumentations from petrochemical producers in the Middle East has increased in recent years as new plants and facilities spring up across the GCC.

Petrochemical companies in the region have been early adopters of the latest technologies, keen to push operational advantages on top of their obvious feedstock cost advantages. Keeping unplanned shutdowns to an absolute minumum has been an integral driver of the appetite for cutting edge instrumentation.

"Significantly, this sector is showing a big interest in implementing an operation readiness philosophy at very early stages of projects to ensure plant startup time is significantly reduced and maximum production efficiency is reached as soon as possible, thereby maximising the return of investment for the project," says Mansour Belhadj, regional advanced solutions leader, Honeywell, Middle East.

The cost of equipping a petrochemical plant with instruments can vary from one company to another depending on the kind of the plant and the product.

"A large petrochemical complex can compromise a number of plants and can cost anything up to US$20bn. The automation spend can be 2-5% of the total cost," explains Belhadj.

The installation and commissioning cost of instruments is a crucial and significant part of the total project cost. "The scale of the outlay also varies on a project to project basis, dependant on how many instruments are required, installation costs and commissioning costs," says Chant.

Companies in the region seem willing to pay for getting the best instrumentation and the swift installation, one of the reasons wireless process control system vendors have seen such interest.

"It may seem like a lot of money, but that can't be looked at in isolation. The typical return on investment for the most advanced solutions applications is less than six months," explains Belhadj.

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