PROCESS CONTROL

Control Automation and Process Control are essential for both day-to-day plant operations as well as plant optimisation.  There are often low-cost automation and process control opportunities which can yield significant margin and plant performance gains through debottlenecking, efficiency improvements or a combination of the two. Modern distributed control systems (DCS) and programmable logic controllers (PLC) provide sites the ability to modify controls quickly and effectively and we aim to work with you to maximise these gains.

These improvements may also provide additional added value by mitigating the impact and likelihood of cascading upset or trip events thereby increasing production up-time and system reliability.

The identification of opportunities during project and operational phases, along with a justified benefit analysis; may result in investment in activities which result in real financial and operational returns. The earlier these opportunities can be identified, the more cost-effective they are in terms of overall financial return.

We have supported multiple major process-control equipment systems and can complement your existing staff for control improvements in day-to-day plant operations as well in front end engineering design (FEED) and commissioning and start-up of projects.

We are able to assist you through your project cycle, with the following services and abilities:

Pre-design and design:

• Front-end-engineering design (FEED) and Detailed design
  • This includes writing and reviewing:
    • Control Narratives for base-layer control systems
    • Safe-guarding narratives
    • Process and Instrumentation Diagrams (P&ID)
    • Single Line Diagrams (SLD)
  • Workflow planning and preparation
  • Project Execution planning
    • Including Gantt charts
  • Vendor selection

Construction:

• We have experience with a range of PLC, DCS and SCADA systems, including but not limited to:
  • ABB, Siemens, Rockwell/Allen-Bradley, Mitsubishi Electric, Schneider Electric and many more PLCs
  • Emerson, Yokogawa, Honeywell, Invensys (Foxborough), Siemens DCS/IPS systems
    • Including interfacing and integration between DCS and 3rd party PLC packages, MES systems, etc

Commissioning and Start-up of control systems:

• We are able to design, program, commission and train complex loops, such as:
  • Decoupling of interacting control loops
  • Split-range control
  • Feed forward control for disturbance rejection
  • Pressure-temperature compensation
  • Low-cut off calculations to increase low-flow system accuracy
  • Duty/Standby logic for redundant equipment

Industry Experience:

• Our process control experience includes, but is not limited to the following industries
  • Power/Electricity generation
  • Water treatment
  • Refining and distillation
  • Chemical processing
  • Gas processing
  • Food and beverage
  • Manufacturing

Applicable Equipment and services:

• This experience allows us to design and/or optimise controls for the following equipment:
  • Compressors and pumps
  • Including centrifugal, axial, and positive displacement types
  • Distillation columns
  • Fired equipment
  • Burners
  • Heaters
  • Furnaces
  • Flash vessels
  • Cryogenic heat exchangers and expanders
  • Reactor vessels
  • Refrigeration circuits
  • Crackers
  • Air packages
  • Nitrogen packages
  • Utilities header controls, including:
    • Steam
    • Instrument air
    • Lube oil
    • Process fluids

Specialised Applications:

• Compressor control, both for anti-surge control and capacity control applications
  • This includes working with CCC systems or compressor controls native to DCS/IPS system
• Environmental control loops, including:
  • pH control
  • Chemical dosing
  • Electrochlorination systems
• Motor control systems
• Pipeline Hydraulic hammer analysis and mitigation
• Joule Thomson (JT) optimisation
• Forensic valve and final element optimisation
• Minimisation of hammering caused by final element
• HVAC Systems
• Power generation management systems

Our abilities include the ability to maximise production in non-optimal situations through applications such as:

• Cripple-mode functionality to compensate when instrumentation is out-of-service/bad
• PID controller tuning for single, cascade & complex multivariable control loops.
• Gain Scheduling for varying process dynamics in equipment

Advanced Process Control

• POSy-SystemTM
• Advance Process Control (APC), model-based control
• Predictive / multivariable control
• Optimisation
• Software packages includes:
  • Aspen DMCplus
  • Honeywell Profit Optimization Suite
  • Yokogawa PACE

Auxiliary Services and skills:

• Cyber Security (Control Systems and Corporate Networks)
• Operator training of control loops
  • We will work with your team to upskill them so that they can make the best use of the plant controls available
• Knowledge of ANSI/ISA-88/IEC 61512-1 for batch processes