London -- Invensys Process Systems (IPS) has announced that it has signed a multi-million dollar contract with Qatargas, one of the world's major producers of liquefied natural gas, to complete a major automation upgrade at the Qatar Gas 1 facility in the Qatar Ras Laffan Industrial City.
Under the terms of the contract, IPS will upgrade control processors, gateways, local area networks and network security with its Foxboro I/A Series distributed control system (DCS) Version 8, including mesh architecture.
"Our goal is to keep our clients' distributed control systems running at peak performance levels," said Mohsen Sorour, IPS Business Development Manager. "Qatargas' existing Foxboro I/A Series DCS system runs versions 6 and 7. IPS will migrate this nodebus-based system to our latest mesh-based technology and by retaining existing field wiring and system cabinets and using online upgrade procedures, we can ensure that plant downtime is kept to an absolute minimum."
The upgrade will give Qatargas improved compatibility between different generations of system components at Qatar Gas 1, as well as extend the life cycle of the overall control system there.
"Because the upgrade will be carried out in phases, different generations of products and software will be able to interoperate as one system," said Jambulingam Balu, Lead I&C Systems Engineer, Qatargas. "This approach ensures that we can budget for staggered investment cycles whilst extending the life cycle of the control system and in turn enhancing the plant's performance."
