Rewarding Innovation: HART names StatoilHydro Plant of the Year

The StatoilHydro Ormen Lange natural gas processing plant in Aukra, Norway, has been selected by HART Communication Foundation (HCF) as recipient of the 2007 HART Plant of the Year Award.

By Control Engineering Staff December 12, 2007

The StatoilHydro Ormen Lange natural gas processing plant in Aukra, Norway, has been selected by HART Communication Foundation (HCF) as recipient of the 2007 HART Plant of the Year Award. The award recognizes StatoilHydro’s innovative use of HART Communication with a Profibus DP network to deliver diagnostics to plant personnel. StatoilHydro’s commitment to predictive diagnostics, along with the number and the extensive range of various HART instruments and valves from multiple vendors, made them an ideal recipient for the recognition.

“Ormen Lange is an impressive project and tremendous engineering accomplishment. We congratulate StatoilHydro for their foresight, planning and vision,” says HCF Executive Director Ron Helson. “They’re forward thinking and pro-active approach serves as a powerful model for industry users worldwide on the benefits of using HART Communication with intelligent field instrumentation, process automation and asset management systems.”

The StatoilHydro Ormen Lange facility produces natural gas that will provide up to 20% of the natural gas for the United Kingdom. The natural gas is shipped via the Langled Pipeline—one of the world’s longest subsea gas pipelines—1,200 km from the coast of Norway to the U.K. The Ormen Lange project consists of 24 subsea wells in four seabed templates with an onshore processing facility to clean up the gas before pushing it into the pipeline.

According to StatoilHydro automation lead engineer Erling Ramberg, predictive diagnostics and the need for absolutely reliable operations were critical factors in design of the Ormen Lange automation and safety systems. “We selected HART Communication as the core technology for our intelligent instrumentation and automation systems because of its proven performance, reliability, support from key suppliers, and availability of products for all applications,” says Ramberg. “The HART-enabled intelligent instrumentation and automation infrastructure is central to our predictive and condition-based maintenance strategy for reliable operations at Ormen Lange.”

Emerson Process Management is one of the vendors providing HART-enabled intelligent infrastructure to StatoilHydro. For example, Emerson’s AMS Suite delivers predictive diagnostics from valves and instruments. More than 350 continuously monitored valves equipped with Emerson’s Fieldvue DVC6000 digital valve controllers supply information to operations, maintenance and reliability personnel. Through AMS Device Manager with the ValveLink Snap-On application, a component of Emerson’s PlantWeb digital plant architecture, online diagnostics warn of pending valve problems, save troubleshooting time, and minimize unnecessary personnel trips into potentially hazardous areas to check status. AMS Device Manager provides an interface that allows online communication with HART field devices over a Profibus DPV1 network, leveraging and maximizing StatoilHydro’s investment in HART-enabled devices, according to Emerson.

“We are delighted that our user has won this prestigious award and achieved recognition for their technical innovation,” said Craig Llewellyn, president of Emerson’s Asset Optimization division. “StatoilHydro worked creatively with Emerson to execute their vision for predictive maintenance in an open architecture, to maximize asset availability and performance.”

The Plant of the Year Award is given annually by the HART Communication Foundation to recognize people, companies and sites that are using the full capabilities of HART technology to achieve improved operations, lower costs and increased availability.

The HCF encourages nominations for HART Plant of the Year from all world areas. Nominations are accepted through May of each year. Previous recipients are BP Canada Energy; Sasol Solvents (South Africa); Clariant, (Germany); BP Cooper River, Detroit Water and Sewerage Department, and DuPont (USA).

HART Communication Foundation

Emerson Process Systems AMS Suite and Plantweb services

For more information on StatoilHydro’s winning application, see “HART Helps Keep the Heat On” in the December 2007 issue of Control Engineering .

Read about prior winners of HART Plant of the Year

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Renee Robbins, senior editor
Control Engineering News Desk

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