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Honeywell provides APC for South Korean refinery

04/14/2008

Ulsan City, South Korea, April 10 – Honeywell announced a three-year, $4.2 million agreement to implement advanced process controls (APC) at S-OIL Corporation’s Onsan refinery. The agreement includes Profit Suite, Honeywell’s main APC solution, as well as engineering services for major units of the refinery complex.

Implementation of Profit Suite, which is anticipated to be complete by 2010, will help Korea-based S-OIL – a leading Asia-Pacific oil refiner – increase throughput at the refinery, streamline production, decrease operating costs and energy consumption and improve overall efficiency, as S-OIL seeks to further strengthen its competitiveness in the region. Previously, S-OIL employed APC technology for a single unit at the complex.

“Advanced process control is the most effective method for discovering new ways to increase process efficiency, so it made perfect sense to expand that technology to all major units,” said Yong Joo Park, section manager at the Onsan refinery. “For us, having a single APC vendor for all units was the most effective strategy. Honeywell was the logical choice because of its extensive refinery APC experience and local engineering capabilities.”

Profit Suite is composed of advanced process control technologies that enhance the capabilities of a facility’s distributed control system (DCS). While the DCS maintains individual controller set points, Profit Suite continuously analyzes a broad range of process information and determines how to improve a plant’s overall operations. Profit Suite then adjusts DCS set points within operator-specified ranges to achieve the economic goals. A standard DCS, for example, may be programmed to execute a specific process at a set temperature. Profit Suite can determine if the process can be executed at a lower temperature to save energy.

“Any manufacturing facility can maintain set points within a DCS to make it perform the necessary steps in a process,” said Simon Park, general manager for Honeywell Process Solutions Korea. “Truly improving business results, though, requires sophisticated technology that analyzes process data and automatically adjusts those set points. This approach is critical to optimizing processes and, therefore, maximizing results.”