PROJECT
PROFILES

Shell Deer Park Refining Company
Hydroprocessing Re-Instrumentation Project

Texas Construction magazine named this project their Best of 2004, and it also won an Award of Excellence from the ABC's Houston Chapter.

Houston, Texas - Twenty miles east of downtown Houston on the Houston Ship Channel a multimillion-dollar re-instrumentation project is underway at the world’s sixth-largest refinery, Shell Deer Park. On February 6, 2003, Emerson Process Services awarded a lump-sum contract to Industrial Specialty Contractors, L.L.C. (ISC) for electrical and instrumentation construction, along with a cost-reimbursable contract for turnaround and hot cut-over of the new systems in five refinery hydroprocessing units. System controls will eventually be centralized in a new control room outside unit “blast zones,” so ISC’s work scope also included installation of fiber-optic cabling and associated equipment to support the new network control center. ISC contract value totals approximately $8,800,000.

Instruments in this very large, complex system will communicate via Emerson’s Delta-V digital automation equipment using the Foundation Fieldbus protocol. Segment design required installation of 448 Interlink junction bricks, 137 temperature control modules, 307 discrete valve controllers (DVCs), 143 instrument junction boxes, and 11 new relay panels for interface and control, as well as two new substations. Junction brick location plans were included in ISC’s contract as a constructability item.

The primary cable raceway alone required nearly 71,000 feet of Cablofil stainless steel basket tray. ISC installed another 9,400 feet of cable tray and supports plus a quarter-million feet of instrument and control wiring. Nearly fifteen hundred Foundation Fieldbus cables with pre-molded ends were also installed, each 30 meters long, along with 17,000 feet of power cable. Power and control systems required 50,000 wiring terminations.

ISC installed 1,146 new instrument tag items requiring over five miles of alloy 825 and stainless steel tubing, plus all associated raceway and supports. Another 3,380 feet of pre-traced, insulated tubing was installed for process and steam-trace applications. In addition, new motor control stations with “hand-off-auto” switches were installed for 21 pump motors in the process areas. ISC Associates installed the control wiring for each station, along with digital I/O interfaces to communicate the status of the new automatic controls to the Delta-V monitors and controllers ISC installed in the control room. A total of 720 I/O interfaces were installed to support the Triconex temperature shutdown system, Bentley Nevada vibration monitoring systems, and motor control interfaces.

ISC’s responsibilities also included HCCU control room modifications to upgrade operator consoles, shutdown panels, and control equipment. During the turnaround existing consoles were disconnected, removed and replaced with 10 new stations. Two new shutdown panels and fiber-optic interface cabinets were installed at that time, along with all associated raceway, cabling, and connections. The control hardware and Delta-V, Bentley Nevada and Triconex systems were installed in three new remote instrumentation enclosures (RIEs) resting on massive concrete supports. Each 90,000-pound RIE is valued at $1,000,000 and is supported by ten, 2-foot diameter concrete piers set to a depth of ten feet. ISC supervised foundation construction, handled grounding and retained and supervised a heavy-lift contractor to haul and place the buildings.

Completion of the Selective Hydro Cracking Unit (SHCU), Post Fractionation (POST FRAC), Hydrogen Processing-1 (HP-1), and Pressure Swing Absorber (PSA) units was planned to match the first of two scheduled unit shutdowns in early January of 2004. The Catalyst Regeneration (CR-3) unit was originally scheduled for completion during a March, 2004, turnaround, but was rescheduled for October at client request to enable vital tie-ins of a separate NOX project.

Overall project duration is projected at 24 months. ISC self-performed 97% of the work, which has already required more than 150,000 work hours.