Thesis (M.Eng.) - Asian Institute of Technology

A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Engineering, School of Advanced Technologies

Petrochemical process technology represents one of the most highly advanced and progressive frontiers of modern scientific and engineering endeavour. The advancement made in this field is so rapid - in general, the production cost decreases with the increase of automation control levels and of plant size. That is why present-day petrochemical technology has developed giant-size plants with full-scale automation of continuously operating petrochemical processes. The automation system should be emphasised on the optimisation of production and the safeguarding of operation including temperature, flow, level and pressure monitoring control, gas leakage and fire alarming systems, etc. This study describes the design and programming of an automation control system for the petrochemical storage using the Programmable Logic Control (PLC) and the automation technologies of Process Control System software (PCS7) and the Human Machine Interface (HMI) with the Windows Control Centre (WinCC V4.02) by SIEMENS. This model is an effort to accelerate the user's acceptance of automation equipment via developing convenient and safe operator-machine interface with comfortable process images and process-data representations. Use of the PLC and HMI will provide full graphics-supported display techniques for a secure control over the model at all time and will optimise the process. The model involves petrochemical storage, process, and distribution with various equipment and controllers. Thus, it will be found valuable since it is an application of the recent state-of-the-art automation technologies in the petrochemical process control fields. The model developed in this study can be effectively utilised for implementation of full-scale automation of continuously operating petrochemical process and storage systems.