Foundation Fieldbus: Marathon Petroleum Shares Lessons Learned

In the fall of 2012, Marathon Petroleum Company (MPC) started a $2.2-billion expansion of its Detroit refinery, the Detroit Heavy Oil Upgrade Project (DHOUP). The expansion centered on a new delayed coker unit and included a distillate hydrotreater, sulfur recovery units and associated utilities. The project also increased the refinery's overall crude capacity, and Air Products built a co-located hydrogen plant.

By any measure, this was a very successful project. The automation system was singled out by the licensor's start-up team, which reported, "This unit experienced no significant problems with process instrumentation, which is quite different from the typical start-up; on many start-ups, getting the instrumentation to function correctly has been a major and continuing challenge."

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