ABB provided a number of software and hardware systems to operate and manage a $20 billion petrochemical plant in Saudi Arabia.
The complex – the largest ever built in a single phase, started producing ethylene and polyethylene in 2015. It is owned by the Sadara Chemical Company, a joint venture between the Saudi Arabian Oil Company and Dow Chemicals has an output of 3 million tonnes a year.
ABB being Main Automation Contractor (MAC) touched all levels of the project from concept through long lifecycle of the plant. With its unique combination of domain and digital expertise ABB facilitated much better economies of scale, while delivering cutting-edge optimization that helped to keep costs in line without sacrificing innovation.
ABB also supplied the safety systems, instrumentation and electrical equipment, as well as process analytic hardware that keeps track of chemical reactions. In addition, the managers of the plant are able to use ABB’s electronic Shift Operations Management System (eSOMS) to operate and maintain their assets. eSOMS automates the main management functions, and helps engineers to acquire, share, store and interrogate data.
Unit based control system provided by ABB’s 800xA distributed control system led to ABB successfully completing the Creditors Reliability Test (CRT); a rigorous effort designed to demonstrate the reliability.
Also, at the heart of everything was ensuring zero accidents and injuries, despite the scale and size of the project.