TDC3000 Upgrade

Saskatchewan, Canada

Yara International ASA is a global firm specializing in agricultural products and envionmental agents.  They are the owners of a nitrogen-based fertilizer facility in Belle Plain, Saskatchewan, Canada that was built in the early 90’s.  The facility had a Honeywell TDC3000 system and planned to migrate it to the new Experion PKS platform over a five to seven year time frame.  A plant expansion project presented an opportunity for an extended plant outage and allowed the installation of the new control system to occur simultaneously.

Original control system installed on site was TDC3000 with:

• 1 LCN and 3 UCNs
• 8 Process Managers (Upgraded to HPMs)
• 4 Logic Managers
• 2 Triconex SIS systems with 2 SMMs
• 1 EPLCG
• 1 AM
• 14 US, 2 GUS, and 2 EST, 6 Flex stations
• 1 C200
• PHD Historian

The new control system has:

• 7 C300 Controllers
• Mix of PMIO and Series C I/O
• 9 Console Stations and 7 Flex Stations
• 2 redundant sets of Experion Servers
• 1 ACE Node
• A four level Experion network with a DMZ
• eServer
• Experion Backup and Restore Server
• Approximately 7000 configured points

Langtree was responsible for:

• Project coordination and management
• Detailed installation design
• Control System Configuration and Graphics Development
• Operator Training
• HAT participation, SAT coordination and execution
• Construction support
• Check-out and Start-up Support

The project was implemented over an eighteen month time period and the tight timelines provided many challenges.  Pre-planning and organization were essential in completing all of the construction work during the five week turnaround.

The system was re-engineered and not simply migrated to the new system in order to take advantage of all the new features and functionality of the Experion PKS system.  Langtree was able to provide the expertise to understand the intent of the existing logic in order to properly implement it on the new platform.

The project was implemented concurrently with a major plant expansion for which Langtree also provided the engineering.

The project involved the following:

• Development of Graphic and Control configurations standards
• The existing fiber infrastructure was re-used and new fiber was added where required
• Replacement of US and GUS Stations with Experion ICON 4 packs
• Replacement of HPMs with C300 controllers and Integrate PM I/O modules
• Replacement of LM I/O with Series C I/O
• Replacement of EPLCG with SCADA Interface using Modbus Bridges
• AM applications had to be developed in the C300 or ACE controllers
• Upgrade of the Triconex Systems to the latest version
• Staging of the complete system for functional testing
• Installation of the SCADA system in parallel with the running plant to enable configuration check-out before plant shutdown

The project was successfully implemented in the time frame allotted.  There were no safety incidents due to project work or design and there was a good response from the Operators.