The PDVSA Petropiar oil refinery located in Mejorador Jose, Barcelona, Venezuela, has been selected by the HART Communication Foundation (HCF, www.hartcomm.org) as recipient of the 2008 HART Plant of the Year Award. The award is given annually to recognize the people, companies and plant sites around the globe that are using the advanced capabilities of HART Communication in real-time applications to improve operations, lower costs and increase availability.
The Petropiar (formerly Petrolera Ameriven) facility, which employs 1,500 people, processes synthetic crude from the Orinoco basin at the rate of 247,575 barrels per day (bpd). About 5,000 measurement points (90% of which are HART devices) transmit the HART communication protocol to the plant’s distributed control system (DCS). The company’s main goal was to implement predictive device diagnostics on all instrumentation. As a result, in the first four years in operation, it realized a reduction in pre-commissioning and commissioning time, improved process and device documentation and reduced loop check time by 60%.
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