Emerson monitors water systems for ADNOC

The measurements detect water leaks and ensure adequate water pressure to fight fires detected by the plant’s around-the-clock water safety system.

The automated monitoring has eliminated hourly clipboard rounds in hazardous areas. Since these readings were taken manually, they were sometimes inaccurate and it would take staff a long time to discover the errors.

This meant that ADNOC would sometimes waste water or the system water pressure would drop below levels needed to fight fires.

Emerson’s Rosemount wireless pressure and flow transmitters collect continuous data from water lines in the facility’s fire safety system, alerting operators when pressure drops.

Devices send signals over great distances and travel around obstacles to reliably relay data to a Smart Wireless Gateway, which is integrated with the facility’s PLC. The company can now immediately detect leaks on the fire safety system and quickly make repairs to restore pressure for fire protection.

“Because the wireless network automatically provides the pressure and flow levels continuously every minute, staff no longer have to make the hourly clipboard rounds, which took 12 hours of staff time per day,” Reni Ninan, a control & automation systems engineer with ADNOC said.

“This has also improved employee safety because personnel no longer have to visit hazardous areas or make rounds during extremely hot temperatures.”

ADNOC personnel were walking outdoors as far as 1.5 km hourly to check manual gauges on the system in the plant’s LPG loading and distribution areas. Ambient temperatures in the area can at times be as high as 50 degrees Celsius/122 degrees Fahrenheit.

ADNOC, the world’s fourth largest oil producer, chose Smart Wireless because of its robust, self-organizing mesh network, and because it cost 80 percent less to install, set up, and commission compared to a wired solution.

The installation, which did not require a site survey, has performed well since commissioning.

“The wireless transmitters and gateway were installed and everything was up and running within one week,” said Ninan “Performance has been excellent, which far exceeded our expectations, especially considering the great distances the signals have to travel to the gateway.”

The self-organizing mesh network technology used in the Smart Wireless solution optimizes data reliability while minimizing power consumption. It also reduces the effort and infrastructure necessary to set up a successful wireless network. Each field device in a self-organizing network acts as a router for other nearby devices, passing messages along until they reach their destination.

If there is an obstruction, transmissions are simply re-routed along the mesh network until a clear path to the Smart Wireless Gateway is found. As conditions change or new obstacles are encountered in a plant, such as temporary scaffolding, new equipment, or a parked construction trailer, these wireless networks simply reorganize and find a new pathway.

In addition to the Smart Wireless solutions already installed at ADNOC, Emerson offers a wide range of wireless field instrumentation and plant operations equipment, including Fisher position monitors, Rosemount analytical and Machinery Health Management devices, and native wireless interfaces to AMS Suite predictive maintenance software, and DeltaV or Ovation digital automation systems, and SmartStart services.

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