(55bn) Advance Alarm Management Applied to DCS Improvement in a Petrochemical Plant: A Case of Study

Alarms use in process industry is fundamental for avoiding process accidents in which people, the environment or process equipment could be damage. Currently, Carbon Black production plants are equipped with distributed control systems (DCS) for setting alarms values and to provide indication of abnormal events to the control rooms operators. However, the basic control system could not meet the needs against the different production conditions and the presence of improper alarms could send a bad signal to control rooms and it could be the start of a process safety event.

In the present study, an alarm system assessment was performed in a petrochemical plant, located at Mamonal industrial park, in Cartagena – Colombia; based on data analysis, it was observed that when process conditions changes occured, the DCS was not be able to adjust alarms settings automatically, according to the load fluctuation and/or process conditions. In order to solve this problem, in first place the DCS performance was studied and it was reported an alarms list, which provided information regarding to the alarm flooding phenomena, alarm chattering and others alarm system issues.

On the other hand, the information earned and alarm rationalization methodology were used for establishing an action plan in order to improve DCS performance. Results showed the utility of these tools and it was identified the need to perform betters in the alarm system logic to avoid flooding alarm phenomena and to make operations safer.