Partial stroke testing for emergency shutdown valve using integrated PLC control design and human-machine interface

Abstract

Partial stroke testing (PST) is a technique that is regularly practiced in oil and gas industries to test the emergency shutdown valve (ESD) by closing a certain percentage of the valve position and stop any flow through the pipeline. Generally, it only functions when there is an emergency occurs in the production system. When the ESD valve remains in one position for a long period, there is a risk and potential of fail on demand which is, the ESD valve fail to operate during the emergency shutdown. The partial stroke testing system still requires manual ignition by human. The distance between the control box with the plant area is limited which might increase the risk in safety issue to the workers. The objectives of this project are to design the PST automated system based on PLC design and to test the performance of the PST design system using lab scale PST system design. The capability of Mitsubishi GT-Designer 3 and Mitsubishi GX-Developer / GX Works 2 as the Human-Machine Interface (HMI) simulation platform for the PST design is applied. The system control and monitoring of PST will be developed by using Mitsubishi GT-Designer 3 interfacing it with Mitsubishi GX-Developer. This interfacing does not only control the mode of the system, it allows data monitor from the HMI which is the PC such as the state of the valve, alarm when PST failed, the alarm history records and pressure flow data. Then, the PST is simulated and tested in real time using PLC design system connected with a PC.