Harmony and Loop Performance Services for a natural gas plant - powered by ServicePort

ABB Advanced Services help improve performance of the world's largest Harmony distributed control system

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How ABB advanced data gathering, analysis and troubleshooting methodology helped identify and correct issues that affected production at Middle Eastern natural gas processing facility

Addressing uneven performance of gas processing trains

A large natural gas processing facility in the Middle East requires uninterrupted operation. Processing volumes demand top performance from process control systems. However, production expansions and upgrades created uneven performance for the site’s eight processing trains.

The customer wanted a single monitoring method to identify existing and potential process problems, as well as a standard method for troubleshooting these problems.

The facility has an ABB Harmony Distributed Control System, and two other control systems. System performance degradation was difficult to detect as the Harmony system was not designed to accommodate current troubleshooting techniques. The size and complexity of the plant (there are ~120,000 I/O points in the facility) also presented challenges.

Main facts

Industry	Oil, Gas and Petrochemicals
Customer	Middle Eastern natural gas processing facility
Country	Middle East
Solutions	Harmony Performance Services Loop Performance Services Powered by ServicePort

A single monitoring method

ABB’s ServicePort Service Delivery Platform, equipped with the Harmony and Loop Performance Service channels, provided the data gathering, analysis and troubleshooting methodology needed by the plant.

ServicePort is a secure, remote-enabled service delivery platform that provides periodic and continuous monitoring of equipment and process variables through bundles of standardized services called “channels.” Channels provide automated data gathering and analysis of system and process performance. From this analysis, ABB service experts can derive troubleshooting actions.

The Harmony Performance Service channel collects Harmony control system parameters, and compares them to best-in-class operating conditions. After identifying areas that may improve system operation, customers may act directly on the data. The customer may work with ABB to develop and implement a detailed improvement plan. Improvements can be sustained through periodic or continuous monitoring.

The Loop Performance Service channel is platform-independent, and identifies control loop performance issues to improve control performance. The channel examines Key Performance Indicators in the process to identify areas of control degradation, and then plant personnel or ABB experts can use this analysis to identify control loops to tune and improve process performance.

Resolved system and process issues

The customer uses ServicePort daily to diagnose and resolve system and process issues, and to monitor system and process performance. Through ServicePort, the customer was able to identify and correct the following issues that affected production:

ServicePort and its channels quickly identified a faulty bridge controller. Prior to the analysis provided through ServicePort, operators thought the problem was due to a faulty I/O interface, and could not find the source of the problem.
By monitoring CPU utilization rates, the Harmony Performance Channel helped the customer find a controller out of normal range, identify the cause and resolve the issue.
Before an expansion was put into production, controller configurations were modelled through ServicePort and found to be incorrect. The configurations were corrected before the expansion went into production.