“With Honeywell’s FOUNDATION Fieldbus technology Gaz de France has greater manufacturing flexibility and productivity through better access to process information enabled by Fieldbus diagnostics and performance analysis data. The ability to predict different diagnostics also helps increase platform uptime and performance by detecting or predicting deteriorating performance and failure conditions before they cause any problems.”
Hans Kwee, Instrumentation, Gaz de France
Gaz de France faced the challenge of improving process control on its offshore platforms. A major part of the challenge required upgrading technology from traditional pneumatic controls and discrete wiring. The company turned to Honeywell for its FOUNDATION Fieldbus solution, an all-digital, serial two-way communications system that serves as the base-level network for the offshore platform production environment.
With Honeywell’s FOUNDATION Fieldbus solution, Gaz de France intends to achieve the following benefits:
Gaz de France uses Honeywell’s FOUNDATION Fieldbus technology for remote offshore platform control.
Gaz de France is a major European energy company with a workforce of more than 53,000. The company produces, transports, distributes and sells gas and services to 13.8 million customers, including individuals, companies and local authorities. With 28 offshore platforms in the English Channel and North Sea, Gaz de France is Europe's number one distributor of natural gas, and one of the world’s top five providers of liquefied natural gas (LNG).
Gaz de France wanted to enable easier maintenance of field instruments and early detection and notification of potential problems. By doing so the company would eliminate unplanned downtime, and reduce maintenance time and labor costs at its offshore platforms. The company made the decision to move from conventional controls to FOUNDATION Fieldbus devices on a number of its offshore platforms.
“We knew that FOUNDATION Fieldbus could offer distinct advantages over traditional analog and discrete wiring or even other digital buses at lower total installed cost and lower ongoing costs,” said Hans Katers, Mining Installation Head, Gaz de France. “The key challenge was establishing the FOUNDATION Fieldbus technology on offshore platforms so they could all be controlled remotely.”
After careful consideration and evaluation, Gaz de France selected Honeywell for its expertise in FOUNDATION Fieldbus. It also considered Honeywell’s value as a vendor for control systems. Gaz de France had recently implemented Honeywell’s Experion® Process Knowledge System (PKS) with success.
To date, six of Gaz de France’s 28 platforms have Honeywell’s FOUNDATION Fieldbus technology installed for two-way communication and remote control. Gaz de France has employed a variety of FOUNDATION Fieldbus-compliant transmitters.
“Honeywell basically guaranteed the interoperability of its system and they didn’t disappoint,” continued Katers. “The Honeywell FOUNDATION Fieldbus system is able to integrate with Honeywell transmitters as well as other third-party transmitters.”
In addition to the remote platforms, Gaz de France’s on-site gas plant also operates with FOUNDATION Fieldbus technology integrated with Experion.
“The integration of our Experion system with FOUNDATION Fieldbus technology has gone well, and we are very pleased with the bidirectional communications among field devices to the control system,” said Hans Kwee, Instrumentation, Gaz de France.
With traditional analog and discrete devices, operations staff had no way to tell if these devices were operating correctly or if the process information they sent was valid so technicians would spend more time verifying device operation. With FOUNDATION Fieldbus devices, users can tell if devices are operating correctly and if the information they're sending is good, bad or uncertain. This eliminates the need for most routine checks and helps detect failure conditions before they cause process problems.
Concluded Kwee, “The ability to perform predictive maintenance scheduling enabled by better process diagnostics, performance analysis data and operational statistics will provide a huge advantage. The bottom line is significant savings in the number of unexpected helicopter rides out to the platforms when something goes wrong.”
Because of the success of Honeywell’s FOUNDATION Fieldbus technology, Gaz de France plans to install the solution on more platforms in 2007.