A Control System Providing a Dynamic Overview of Emergency Situations at Oil and Gas Processing Plants

Abstract

Oil and gas processing plants handle very large volumes of gases and liquids, many of which are both flammable and poisonous. Combined with the high pressures often involved as part of the processing, an accident has the potential to cause significant damage. This does not only include the plant and its surrounding, but there is also a serious risk of injury to field personnel. An unplanned production shut down is also very costly in terms of lost revenues. If an accident should occur, it is very important that the operators in the plant's control room have a good overview of the situation, in order to ensure that the plant is evacuated, and to coordinate the work of the emergency personnel. This thesis presents new ideas for a system intended to give the plant's control room operators a better overview of such emergency situations than what is available today. This overview combines personnel tracking, visualization of sensor data and video surveillance. Existing systems provide these functions separately, but the goal of this thesis is to demonstrate the benefits of combining personnel tracking, visualization of sensor data and video surveillance into a single system. The work presented in this thesis comprises: - Requirement specifications for the system that describe the necessary functionality. - A survey and evaluation of potential systems and technologies for personnel tracking. Based on the system requirements and the evaluation, Active radio frequency identification (RFID) is found to be the most suitable. - An implementation of a demonstration system that illustrates some of the concepts and ideas from the system requirement specifications. - A conclusion and suggestions for further work. The system presented here has been developed especially with StatoilHydro's methanol plant at Tjeldbergodden in Møre og Romsdal in mind, but is meant to be suitable for potential use also at other oil and gas processing plants. Technical challenges that need to be solved before potential further development of the system can be started are also identified and documented.