Feedwater plant upgrade relies on PlantPAx
While itās not in the movies, J.R.R. Tolkien famously wrote that, āWater hot is a noble thing,ā and the same goes for boilers in refineries. Oil, gas, chemicals and most other modern blessings wouldnāt be possible without old-fashioned hot water and steam, which both require clean water. To keep this crucial resource flowing cleanly and safely at a large refinery in Ontario, Canada, Teng Inc. in Mississauga upgraded its boiler feedwater treatment plant (BFWTP) this past June from an older, programmable logic controller (PLC) system to Rockwell Automationās PlantPAx distributed control system (DCS).
Glen Rycroft, senior process control engineer at Teng, presented āUpgrade of obsolete boiler feedwater treatment plant PLC/HMI to PlantPAx 5.0ā at the Rockwell Automation Process Solutions User Group conference during Automation Fair 2022 week at Chicagoās McCormick Place.
Teng is a 26-year-old, mid-sized engineering, procurement, construction and management (EPCM) firm with more than 145 staffers, who provide project lifecycle services from project development to commissioning/start-up, maintenance services and support such as inspections, optimization and turnaround services, and automation and controls including system integration from concept to commissioning.
Overcoming obsolescence
This refinery also runs 24/7, so there was no feasible way to schedule a full plant shutdown to replace its PLC. Because only a short migration window was available and the plant had to remain online throughout, the new control system would have to be robust and flexible enough to handle it.
The existing BFWTP was controlled by a 30-year-old, obsolete Honeywell IPC-620 PLC with an obsolete version of Intellution iFix human-machine interface (HMI) software. The PLC managed more than 500 I/O points, running about 30 pumps and 100 valves, while its programming was heavily sequenced for operations, such as regenerations and backwashes. The PLC was also connected to a legacy Honeywell DCS for supervisory monitoring.
āThe obsolete PLC was no longer supported by the vendor, so it was hard to obtain spares. Meanwhile, PLC component failures were rapidly increasing over the past two or three years. A catastrophic PLC failure would cause a costly plant outage of more than 12 weeks,ā said Rycroft. āLikewise, the HMI wasnāt communicating with the PLC because a custom driver on the HMI workstation wasnāt supported, and native files werenāt available. As a result, operator interaction was only available through the Honeywell DCS communications link to the Honeywell PLC. In addition, troubleshooting in the old PLC wasnāt intuitive, onsite staff werenāt very familiar with the software, and Tengās support was required for detailed troubleshooting or modifications. Also, the old PLCās programming terminal was well beyond end of life with multiple component failures, and a replacement would be difficult to obtain and set up. Finally, the PLCās documentation was out of date or non-existent PLC documentation, including control narratives and I/O wiring diagrams.ā
Evaluating new controls
To evaluate and implement a new PLC, the BFWTP would need a replacement that was also sequence-based, though this wasnāt ideal for the legacy DCS. The refinery eventually settled on Rockwell Automationās PLCs because they were already the site standard outside the feedwater plantās DCS as part of an earlier upgrade. Based on a review by stakeholders, it also adopted PlantPAx due to its ease of operations, enhanced troubleshooting for maintenance, ability to easily complete future modifications, and similar look and feel to a planned, plantwide DCS upgrade.
The refinery and Teng considered converting the IPC-620ās program to Studio5000 software via a third party. However, Rycroft reported they rejected this option because this type of conversion wouldnāt benefit the site because troubleshooting would still require manual scanning using ladder logic, and it wouldnāt provide PlantPAxās enhanced HMI faceplates for operations and maintenance. Plus, the cost difference was negligible compared with migrating to PlantPAx. In addition, converting IPC-630 to Studio5000 would still require:
- Comparable testing to confirm conversion was completed correctly.
- Using an output conversion tool to maintain the old PLCās tag naming syntax, and keeping legacy tags and logic, which would make troubleshooting messy.
- Converting tools from ladder logic to function block because the BFWTPās site standard is function block where possible, and ladder where function block isnāt possible.
- Still having to change process/control loops manually.
- Performing system diagnostics manually.
Likewise, the refinery and Teng also rejected upgrading the feedwater plantās iFix HMI software to its latest version because the supplier reported that migrating would have still been mostly manual due to its age. āWith negligible cost difference to reprogram HMI in PlantPAx, along with multiple benefits of PlantPAx interface, upgrading the old iFix HMI did not make sense for this application,ā explained Rycroft. āIt also wouldāve required about 10-20% more testing without pre-built object libraries.ā
Picking out the pieces
Based on the BFWTPās 500 I/O and required availability, Teng and the refinery selected redundant 1756-L83EP process controllers and racks, each with a redundant power supply. They estimated CPU utilization at 50% and memory utilization at 44%, though actual performance after commissioning was only 30-40%. Other components and software included:
- I/O modules upgraded in-kind with 25% spare I/O points for expansion;
- Modbus RTU communications to the DCS via Prosoft MVI56E-MCM to replace proprietary Honeywell communications link between the DCS and the old PLC;
- Device Level Ring (DLR) EtherNet/IP communications among racks;
- Stratix 5700 switch for communicating with the HMI workstation and engineering workstation; and
- PlantPAx 5.0 DCS with Studio5000, V.33, and FactoryTalkView SE, V.12.
āBefore shipping hardware and software, we took advantage of distributor Gerrie Electricās value-added service of staging all the hardware at their facility in Burlington, Ontario, as per network architecture drawings to reduce onsite installation and testing time,ā said Rycroft. āAll firmware was loaded, software and patches were installed on the HMI and engineering workstations, and preliminary switch and network configurations were completed. Processor rack redundancy was also configured and tested. Meanwhile, the factory acceptance test (FAT) was completed at Tengās office, which includes a well-stocked automation lab for testing and training.ā
Programming the plant
Before migrating the BFWTPās new controls, Rycroft reported that Teng also performed several standard PLC and HMI upgrades. These consisted of developing the I/O database, developing and reviewing the new control narrative, developing and reviewing static graphics, and conducting more thorough redundancy testing, DLR testing, switch configuration and IP address assignments during the PLC panels and hardware FAT to speed up onsite testing.
āThe original IPC-620 PLC program, which had been one of the onsite standards, was difficult to read, and with one rung per page, it was difficult to search through,ā explained Rycroft. āOther PLC functions were located in separate programs, such as I/O conditioning, DCS communications, diagnostics etc. To program the new PLC, each program was divided by device containing individual PlantPAx objects. Sequences were programmed using ladder to interface with PlantPAx objects. Finally, objects were built first, which was done in bulk by using the Process Library Online Configuration Tool.ā
Likewise, typical function block layouts were developed with a consistent look and feel, which was programmed for each function block diagram (FBD) for maintenance troubleshooting. All commands to actuate devices were located directly in FBD and commented according, instead of using the old programās method of searching and cross-referencing.
āWherever possible, all previous program functions were moved into PlantPAx objects to remove as much custom programming as we could,ā said Rycroft. āComplexity of sequences drove them to be programmed separately, interfacing with PlantPAx objects where required. Each sequence was complex on its own, and generally each sequence interacted with at least one other sequence. We used the Process Library Online Configuration Tool thoroughly during bulk development for quick modifications to parameters given the number of I/O points in the system.ā
In addition, interlocks and permissives were reprogrammed into PlantPAx objects for enhanced operator and maintenance troubleshooting. Also, local Honeywell PID controllers were migrated by Teng into the new PLC program as PlantPAx blocks. All loops were also retuned by Teng to further improve control. Similarly, storing the alarm database within the PLC and automatically generating it with PlantPAx objects provided many benefits, such as speeding up development by about 5%, and eliminating the need to synchronize and double check the PLC versus the HMI alarm database.
āIntegrating local, loop controllers into the PLC gives the operators full control capability from the HMI, and loops are now automatically controlled via sequences, reducing dedicated operator time in the field. This was a big advance,ā added Rycroft. āTwo of the loops were also previously bad actors that tended to overshoot, requiring additional operator intervention. Now that theyāre tied into seeing the rest of the process through the PLC, control is much smoother for these loops, which reduces or eliminates sequence faults due to these controllers.ā
Once all this programming was done, the pre-commissioning software FAT was held during two days at Teng, while operations and maintenance training was completed over multiple shifts before and after commissioning at the refinery. āBetween the BFWTPās DCS and PLC, we also completed a significant amount of testing because more than 600 tags had to be transferred via the Modbus RTU link for monitoring and control,ā added Rycroft. āThis testing was accelerated by using virtual/simulation modes of PlantPAx objects rather than manually creating simulation logic/force bits.ā
Commissioning and benefits
During the six-day migration, approximately 25% of the plant remained online, which required installing temporary facilities required for working seamlessly with the new PLC throughout the migration. āI/O wiring migrations from IPC-620 to the ControlLogix PLC required I/O power to be segregated from power for the new PLC chassis. This allowed the PLC to stay online, and let us complete any requested last-minute changes and review items with operations,ā said Rycroft. āWe also completed I/O loop checks, which were again sped up by using PlantPAx compared to a typical system. Everything was now well organized, easily visible and manipulated from the HMI with no time wasted on searching for I/O in the old PLC program.ā
Benefits gained by migrating the feedwater plant to PlantPAx and ControlLogix included fully supported hardware and software from Rockwell Automation with local distributor Gerrie Electric directly involved in system setup and support.
āWeāre no longer required to obtain third-party parts for an obsolete PLC,ā said Rycroft. āThe feedwater plant reduced the time that operations and maintenance spent on plant troubleshooting by 60% thanks to up-to-date equipment, improved controls, HMIs, alarms and diagnostics.
āWe also accelerated the development and programming schedule by 20% by using PlantPAx 5.0 and associated tools, which also reduced expenses to the customer. In short, PlantPAx 5.0 played a major role in ensuring the migration stayed on schedule. Finally, this projectās implementation costs were estimated to be very similar to alternatives, while providing a solution with much greater added value.āĀ