Oil and Gas Case Study – CIMCON Digital

Case Study - Oil and Gas

Real time Monitoring of Cathodic Protection System for Cross Country Pipelines

Client : IOCL

The Project

Salaya-Mathura Pipeline (SMPL): Indian Oil operates 1870 km long Salaya-Mathura Pipeline from Salaya (near Vadinar) in Jamnagar district, India on the coast of Gujarat to bring crude oil to Indian Oil’s refineries at Koyali (Gujarat), Mathura (Uttar Pradesh) and Panipat (Haryana). Two SPM systems are operated at Vadinar to unload the crude oil received from tankers including Very Large Crude oil Carriers (VLCCs) with offshore pipelines. At Vadinar, Indian Oil has a vast crude oil tank farm of 13 tanks with a total capacity of 11.05 million kiloliters. Indian Oil also has crude oil storage tank farm at Viramgam with a total capacity of 5.15 million kiloliters. Another storage tank farm at Chaksu has six tanks with a total capacity of 3.60 million kiloliters.

Introduction

The Customer, Indian Oil Corporation Limited (IOCL) is a Fortune 500 company (Rank 153) with a sale turnover of $41 billion for fiscal year 2005. Their business interests include refining, pipeline distribution, retail distribution of petroleum products, Gas, Exploration & Production.

Specific overseas initiatives on consortium approach include an exploration & production sharing agreement for two blocks in Libya, an exploration service contract for the Farsi block in Iran and onshore farm-in arrangements in Gabon.

The Work

Design, testing, supply, installation & commissioning of wireless GSM based SCADA system and two RTUs including modification of Transformer Rectifier Units (TRU) on the SMPL pipeline installations. The locations of TRUs were at Jaksi and Hebatpura, Gujarat, India.

Benefits

The benefits from the system can be listed as follows:

Centralized Monitoring of cathodic protection data for pipeline.
Corrosion prevention became easier.
Remote monitoring which improved data integrity.
Alarms generated for any exceptional events which improved efficiency and reduced maintenance cost.

The Solution

CIMCON having its own development team based in India, Ahmedabad, customized the SCANET software to suit IOCL’s requirement. The software had mimics to represent the transformer rectifier unit readings.

The system comprised of two existing TRUs, two RTUs and the centralized SCADA facility. Data from each of the above unit was acquired by respective RTU and was sent to the Central Monitoring Station (CMS) using GSM technology.

CIMCON offered SCANET software and GSM communication enabled Remote Terminal Units (iRTU 6000) to ensure seamless data integration for monitoring.

Parameters were monitored by the CMS

TR voltage & TR current
Pipe-to-soil input signal from reference cell
TRU mains supply on monitoring
TRU MCB Trip condition monitoring
Cumulative running hours of the Cathodic Protection Unit through remote monitoring.
Over current & over voltage.
Under protection & Over protection.

Salient features of the TRUs

Make: Canara Electric
Cooling type: Air cooled
Power Supply: Single phase
Rating: 50 V & 50 Amp

The RTU was responsible for the following functions

1

Acquire data from corresponding transformer rectifier units. Log & store data with time stamping, and retain it even in case of power failure.

2

Make TR data to be available at the central station and to pre-defined mobiles on request. Any alarm generated is reported to the central station through SMS automatically independent of normal data transmission schedule.

3

Configurable data transmission frequency. Can transmit data to remote central station as per programmed schedule over GSM network.

4

Any alarm message can be transmitted to pre-defined mobile numbers as well as central station. Enabling and disabling of alarms on cell phones by system verified & authenticated users.

After the data is received by the central station, historical trending and multiple spreadsheet-based reports improved the data analysis process.

1

Windows operating system. Strong data management and display function – supports trending, mimic, spreadsheet based data display.

2

Versatile report generation capability. Allows remote programming of scan rate, communication parameters, data logging rate, Interruption cycle programming, RTU remote configuration etc.

3

Access control by password protection. Real time database. High Availability. Dynamic data exchange.

4

Customized detailed data acquisition screen. Alarm log generation based on defined limits.