Page 100 - Industrial Plants 2014

SaFCo Engineering assets in one of its major refineries.
and Rockwell automation Safco Engineering has a very good relationship with
Rockwell Automation in Italy. When we started out, we
Safco Engineering was founded in 2003 for the design already had an idea that we wanted to develop an
and manufacture of fire and gas safety systems and integrated approach and we decided to approach
equipment for the industrial sector. Initially focussing on Rockwell Automation, who, as it turns out, were very
products, the company is now more focussed on sys- flexible and eager to help and support us. The rela-
tem integration. tionship has since grown and Rockwell Automation
Highlighting its systems integration capabilities, it was gets deeply involved in many of our other projects;
recently called upon by a leading oil and gas company and we have the support of a very knowledgeable
in the Middle East to develop and deploy an integrated, local engineer, who understands our issues and unu-
single-platform fire and gas safety solution for all of the sual questions.

In this type of installation, the traditional approach
is to have separate fire and gas safety systems for
the plant and the office buildings. The individual
needs of both areas are currently catered for by
mature technologies, which are seen in applications
around the world, but they often rely on completely
different communication protocols and associated
networks.
The challenge for Safco Engineering was to develop
an integrated solution
that would run on a
single network using a The challenge for
single protocol – Safco Engineering
removing many of the was to develop an
communication and integrated solution
complexity barriers that would run on a
present in other single network using
An overview of systems. As well as the a single protocol –
Ruwais Refinery network/platform issues removing many of
Expansion PLC it also had to address the communication
cabinets and complexity
the different legislation
covering the two barriers present in
discrete areas. other systems
In addition to this
primary requirement,
the project required multiple additional features,
many of which are commonplace in the oil and
gas industry. The refinery needed redundant hot-
backup controllers, which employ communication
via a redundant fibre optic network ring. It
needed redundant OLE for Process Control Data
Typical local fire alarm Access (OPC DA) to interface with the Distributed
control panel power Control System (DCS) and OLE for Process
lines: two redundant Control Alarm & Events (OPC AE) to interface
lines of 480 W power with plant’s alarm-managements system, while
supply (Allen Bradley),
a redundant line of 80 using the Simple Network Time Protocol (SNTP)
W power supply (Allen to provide time synchronisation between the fire
Bradley), and and gas system and the DCS. There was also
insulation control the need to be able to hot swap single
module
components.

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