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http://www.yokogawa.com/suc/
SUCCESS STORY
Ulsan, Korea
August 2006
June 2008
Refining
Executive Summary
SK Energy is the energy and chemical affiliate of South Korea’s SK Group. Korea’s largest oil refiner (1.1 million barrels of
daily refining capacity), SK Energy controls about 35% of Korea’s fuel retailing market and operates 4,270 service stations.
The firm is involved in oil exploration and production in 15 countries and has proven reserves of 500 million barrels of oil
equivalent. SK Energy imports coal and liquid petroleum gas (LPG), and claims a 44% share of the Korean LPG market. The
company supplies natural gas to Seoul and other cities in Korea, and also makes lubricants, low-pollutant gasoline, and
petrochemicals.
SK Energy decided to construct a new fluid catalytic cracking (FCC) facility at its Ulsan refinery to convert bunker C oil into
high quality, low sulfur, and high value-added refined liquid products such as gasoline and diesel. This decision was made for
the following reasons:
1. Respond to growing demand for cleaner burning distillate fuels and falling demand for residual fuels such as bunker C
fuel oil due to stricter environmental regulations
2. Increase gasoline output to meet growing demand through 2010
3. Enhance the company’s price competitiveness in the global fuel market
4. Increase the complexity ratio of the Ulsan refinery, which is lower than that of the company’s other refineries in South
Korea
For this new FCC facility, SK Energy awarded Yokogawa Korea a contract to install a state-of-the art CENTUM CS 3000
distributed control system (DCS) and field instrumentation. Working on a very tight project schedule, Yokogawa Korea
successfully completed all control system and instrumentation engineering and the new facility was able to launch production
of commercial-grade products on schedule.
Yokogawa Provides CENTUM CS 3000 and Field Instruments
for New FCC Facility
ISD-SP-R130
All Rights Reserved, Copyright © 2009, Yokogawa Electric Corporation
SUCCESS STORY
The Challenges and the Solutions
The overall project goals were identified during the feasibility study and project planning phases, and
emphasized schedule, quality, cost, and safety.
A major challenge was the tight project schedule as SK Energy needed to complete construction of this new FCC plant in
just 15 months and begin a pilot program of operational testing no later than mid 2008. Normally such plants take at least
two years to complete and commission, and require another three months before they can be operating at full capacity.
After receiving this order in August 2006, Yokogawa Korea’s project team worked closely with personnel from three
different EPC companies, holding biweekly technical meetings to discuss and decide on hardware and software
specifications.
For this new FCC project, more than 40 sub-system interface cards and a Modbus interface were utilized to integrate
systems from 14 partner companies with the CENTUM CS 3000 DCS. This enabled status information and other types of
data from compressors, blowers, filter systems, dryers, and a wide variety of other types of equipment to be transferred to
the DCS and viewed by operators on various graphic displays at the human interface stations (HIS). By keeping constantly
up to date on the status of all processes, the operators are able to easily analyze and understand the process situation and
take action immediately. In addition, all production data gathered at the DCS can be transferred to higher level computer
systems via an OPC interface. That data can be stored for the tracking of overall production efficiency and used for asset
management analysis and other types of plant equipment studies. In these ways, integration contributes to visualization of
all plant data, significantly reduces labor costs, and ensures safe plant operation.
The new central control room