SAMREF Refinery Embraces Wireless Applications to address safety, reliability and efficiency

Cisco partner Honeywell have published great customer story illustrating the OneWireless* Network Infrastructure solution that features Cisco innovation and ruggedization. It addresses customer issues of safety, reliability and efficiency. It provides true visibility for the customer. Read on to find out more…

SAMREF is a joint venture between Saudi Arabian Oil Company (Saudi Aramco) and Mobil Yanbu Refining Company Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Exxon Mobil Corporation. The case study tells us that the SAMREF refinery complex in Yanbu, Saudi Arabia produces approximately 400,000 barrels of product daily including gasoline, heating oil, LPG, jet fuel and other energy products.

As a Control Engineering Article (Industrial wireless for mobile video monitoring) from a couple of months ago states:

“Since 2013, SAMREF has used a wireless network to enable Wi-Fi clients and ISA100 Wireless field instruments to wirelessly connect and to obtain measurements in hard-to-access locations; this works consistently and reliably in areas previously considered impractical or off-limits.

Even with the flexibility to quickly and cost-effectively employ wireless closed-circuit television (CCTV) cameras, however, it is impossible to cover the entire site. As a result, those in the central control room can end up with no view of intrusions, fires, explosions, or other incidents facing emergency response teams. Plant managers or operations directors are left in the dark, usually completely reliant on verbal information from the teams on the ground.

To overcome this problem, an industrial wireless provider worked with SAMREF to deploy a live video solution for its emergency command vehicle, a first responder to any incident”***

Well, you now know that the industrial wireless partner was Honeywell, providing a solid Cisco mesh-based solution, with an architecture similar to the Honeywell image shown below.

It’s clear that SAMREF were looking for a solution that would provide strong business benefits:

Safety: improving plant and worker security.

Reliability: improving maintenance program and/or reducing maintenance costs.

Efficiency: managing long distance installations or remote sites with minimal up-front and life-cycle costs.

So Honeywell were charged with enhancing the customers incident management procedures and rescue ops to improve employee safety. The solution had to have a wireless network that was rugged and able to reliably transmit quality video from cameras to central control sites and mobile “Incident Commander” vehicles. That’s where Cisco and our partnership comes in:

The OneWireless solution includes CISCO 1552S Access Points with integrated ISA100 Wireless**. Cisco especially designed our access points to be able to integrate with certain 3rd party protocol radios – and ISA100 being one of the main two. Each wireless access point at SAMREF includes three radios – one for communications with traditional transmitters, a second radio for communications with Wi-Fi devices and a third radio for high speed communications of field data. The CISCO Wireless LAN Controller is also an integral part of the solution.

As the case study says, this means:

“Deployment of industrial video cameras over the wireless network enables remote coverage of the refinery site from roaming vehicles. This allows SAMREF to record safety and security incidents, compare them with previous incidents and keep a video record of near misses. By providing the refinery Incident Commander with a direct view of real-time streaming video from the vehicle he is able to make faster decisions during crisis situations while reducing his dependency on the control room.”

Honeywell then goes on to the crux: The Wireless solution allows SAMREF to enhance their incident management procedures and rescue operations resulting in improved employee safety. Now that’s important!

Do you doing anything like this? How’s it working? Let me know! And read the Honeywell case study here if you’d like to: SAMREF Refinery Embraces Wireless Applications, Sets Foundation for Site-wide OneWireless Network Infrastructure.

* OneWireless is a trademark of Honeywell International, Inc.
** All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
*** Control Engineering, Diederik Mols 11/30/2015.