The Shell Oman Marketing Company is using technology from AUMA to automate 74 valves at a tank farm near Muscat, Oman.
The 15 tanks at the Mina al Fahal tank farm store crude oil, fuel oil and refined hydrocarbons. For the upgrade project, AUMA supplied a SIMA master station control system and 74 SAEx .2 multi-turn actuators with ACExC .2 intelligent actuator controls.
The actuators are installed in four main areas of the site: manifold and tank farm; sprinkler tank valves; bunker area; and pump house. The flexibility of the SIMA master station allowed AUMA to set up a choice of mimic views based around these locations.
Redundant communication using the Modbus RTU protocol on a ring network ensures that all actuators remain accessible even in the event of a fault or cable break. To enhance safety, the actuators also have separate emergency shutdown (ESD) inputs.
Commissioning was completed on time in August 2017. In March 2017, customer representatives visited AUMA’s modern manufacturing facilities in Wenden, one of six AUMA production sites in Germany. The customers witnessed the successful completion of the factory acceptance tests (FAT) for the SIMA master station. The highly automated FAT process takes place on a dedicated test bench, with all results saved for later retrieval.l
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