Aramco ESD System – KSA

Key Features:

Oil and Gas form a great concern to many nations, being the main attribute in a county’s economic growth and welfare. Therefore, this industry is continuously utilizing innovation and the latest cutting-edge technologies, to increase the efficiency and satisfy the market needs.
New as well as current Oil fields demand the utilization of the latest communication techniques and technologies, in order to set up a secure and reliable two-way communication channel for monitoring, as well as handling reports that require massive amounts of data and transmission power.

The Challenges

An emergency shutdown system or ESD is a system that is used in hazardous areas to prevent situations that could have catastrophic effects economically, environmentally, and operationally. They are designed to minimize the consequences of emergencies, such as injury to personnel or damage to equipment, by protecting against things like leaks, escape of hydrocarbons, fire outbreaks, and explosions. Emergency shutdown systems can be found on oilfields (oil well heads).

There are two identical parallel PLC systems in any dual ESD system that work simultaneously.

The program written in the system is applied to the microprocessors of both PLCs. The plant operates as long as the field inputs are correct. If there is an input failure then both PLCs detect this and the output control element will shut down the plant. Because there is a slim chance for both PLCs to fail simultaneously.

The challenge was providing reliable and cost effective PLCs to be installed in the ESD system required by Aramco.

The Solution

After studying the requirements of the system and the network layout, Xceltra provided Aramco with Agatel’s XMP100 PLC that met all required features, had a compact size, and yet affordable in price.

The XMP110 PLC were chosen for the following specs:

• IEC 61131-3 Standard Instructions
• Real-time Monitoring/Controlling of Process Data
• Offline Simulation
• Programming with USB Cable
• Software Protection with Password Definition
• Axis Control Blocks Library
• PID and ON-OFF Control Blocks Library
• Math Floating Points Blocks Library
• Astronomical Timer Blocks Library
• Creating Custom Macro Blocks
• Real-time Monitoring of Process Data via the WEB Server
• Upload/Download Programs over TCP/IP
• Remote Firmware Upgrade
• IP Filtering Feature
• IoT Facility
• MODBUS Gateway Mode

Success Stories