March 11, 2023/by Bob McIlvride

Optimizing OPC connections with the DataHub

In 2005 the Sultanate of Oman issued a Royal Decree to develop the giant Mukhaizna oil field covering a vast expanse of desert in the center and south of the country. A major worldwide producer of oil, natural gas, and chemicals was given responsibility for developing the Mukhaizna field, and from 2005 to 2008 oil recovery rates were increased by more than 600% through the use of a steam-assisted gravity drainage process. As each year goes by, the company makes every effort to continuously upgrade technology and improve productivity of the field.

Eight separate production facilities in the Mukhaizna oil field are using Rockwell PLCs, linked to Iconics HMI/SCADA systems for data visualization and operator control. This data collection and distribution mechanism worked well when first implemented, but as the number of data points increased over time it became clear to the project engineers that they needed a way to improve performance. So they began to look for a way to streamline the data flow. The solution they found not only performed well, but it created other, significant opportunities for real-time data integration.

 At each of the eight locations, Rockwell PLCs are connected to an Iconics Genesis32 HMI through an OPC server. The TOP Server OPC server from Software Toolbox (Cogent’s Sales and Technical Partner) gathers data from as many as 20 PLCs, and feeds that to the HMI. As new equipment was brought online, the number of tags in the system approached 30,000, which is normally not a problem for TOP Server. But something was clearly different with this system and it became apparent that some sort of optimization was necessary.