Brownfield Gas Processing Facility
Tri Tech Revamp of Gas Processing Plant Improves Safety, Streamlines Operations, and Prevents Costly Fines
The Situation
It’s not unusual to decommission a natural gas facility. So when a Tri Tech customer, one of the largest gas midstream companies in the United States, shut down one of their processing plants several years ago, most people within the company didn’t expect that it would ever come back online. However, due to expansions in a key market and increased production needs, the customer found themselves in need of getting the facility back up and running to meet demand. This was all taking place at the same time the customer was constructing a new, larger facility next door to work in tandem. It was imperative that both facilities were able to handle the gas they were processing.
The Customer’s Need
The facility in question was shut down in a less-than-ideal condition. Incidents had occurred prior to shut down (some quite significant and costly) that were evidence of the challenged state of safety programming and protocols that had been in place, leaving damage to physical assets on-site. In addition, little documentation existed for the network design and the components which made it up. The drawings that did exist were largely inaccurate, raising questions as to whether any documents could be trusted. To make matters even stickier, the majority of the staff from previous operations had left the company, leaving a void in legacy knowledge of the plant.
Due to multiple safety events that had occurred, significant changes (especially in their pressure control systems) were required before the facility could re-open – and the opening schedule was tight. In fact, failure to meet the schedule would result in losses between $50,000 and $75,000 per day. Facing a lack of documentation and no ability to learn from staff, the process of quickly putting new pieces back together was a demanding task, and a great deal was at stake. Luckily, the customer partnered with Tri Tech to get the job done.
The Tri Tech Solution
With several successful gas midstream industry projects under our belts, as well as experience with this particular customer, the Tri Tech team went to work. Our first order of business was to understand the details behind the current state of the plant and where we needed to go. We listened, created a vision for the project, and helped the customer understand how we could mitigate risks during project execution.
The project took the following path:
Development of Documentation: Knowing there was very little reliable documentation we could count on, the team took a hands-on approach. We reviewed what we had, and then compared it to what was actually happening as a means to develop new documentation that could be used not only for this project, but as reference for any future work. This paved the way for our ability to engineer a solution.
Process Hazard Assessment: This assessment is a foundational step in engineering for safety protocols. It helped us to identify risks associated with the process of transferring natural gas in the facility, pointing our potential failures, hazards and weak spots – all of which contributed to the past incidents they’d experienced.
Creation of Proper Migration Path: The Tri Tech plan included a migration path that would transition our customer away from old, legacy hardware and seamlessly deploy a system with updated hardware that is better integrated across the network and can help with controls, maintenance and safety measures.
Deployment: As we examined the state of the facility and investigated the devices being used across the network, we identified the modern Rockwell hardware and the software platform that would not only enhance operations, but also create safety measures to help avoid future incidents. The fully engineered system included:
- Rewiring of the facility to accommodate upgraded equipment.
- Newly designed control panels, rewired individually to fuse each device. If a device goes down, it now won’t bring down the entire system
- Software updates to help facilitate monitoring of devices to avoid an over-pressure event.
- Top-to-bottom Rockwell Solution that both brings the facility up-to-date, but also is easier to manage for the operators.
- Training to ensure that all staff was knowledgeable and comfortable operating in the new system.
The Results
First and foremost, Tri Tech Automation was able to bring the plant online in accordance with the deadline which admittedly, was the most difficult part of the project. We helped the client to become operational in time to meet their contractual obligations and avoid the steep daily penalties for failure to produce.
Just as importantly, Tri Tech delivered a complete solution that addressed their safety and operational challenges while deploying a better overall system that will serve them for years to come. The customer now has access to more information to make informed decisions, and that has the safeguards in place to avoid the dangerous events they had previously experienced. In fact, a number of potential accidents have already been prevented due to the safety protocols and functionality. When a problem is detected, the system shuts down as it’s designed to.
We’re proud to have furthered the trust and confidence our customer has in the Tri Tech team. Since the completion of this project, we’ve been awarded additional projects to perform similar work and help all involved feel confident in the safety and operation of these facilities.