Italian builders take control for gas pipeline

E and C Engineering and Control is to use an RTP control system for a natural gas receiving terminal under construction in Gela, Sicily.

E and C Engineering and Control is a rapidly growing system engineering company and system integrator in Milan, Italy.

As a new company it has selected product suppliers that can give it the edge over the local competition, and it chose RTP for its control system.

E and C has won its first order from the Italian ENI Group to supply and integrate the control, ESD and F and G systems for a natural gas receiving terminal under construction in Gela, Sicily.

This terminal will eventually receive gas from the Greenstream pipeline laid under the Mediterranean Sea to transport the gas to Sicily.

For enhanced safety the RTP high integrity control system has redundant processors and redundant I/O and all communication links are dual redundant.

(The ESD and the F and G systems came from other vendors).

A double ring is used for elevated safety.

There is also a redundant Modbus link via RTU to exchange data with the departure point of the pipeline.

Although modest in size, the RTP system, which uses the RTP2300R and has approximately 270 redundant I/O and 80 single digital outputs for local displays, represents an important breakthrough in a particularly diffident market, and an important reference for future orders in Italy.

The cabinets were assembled and tested in the E and C headquarters in Milan, where all the engineering work and system configuration for the project were performed.

The system was delivered beginning 2004 and commissioning started directly afterward.

The terminal is expected to be operational in September.

ENI is a highly conservative company that sets very high standards.

Although the RTP system was the most economical solution, because RTP does not have a large customer base in Italy it was essential to convince the company that RTP was capable of fulfilling its exacting specifications and that E and C could support this major project.

The technical support provided throughout the selection process by Primation, the RTP distributor for continental Europe, proved also critical in achieving the sale.

The RTP high-integrity control system architecture is extremely scalable, flexible, and incorporates multiple levels of redundancy.

Its unique design is built upon a set of standard hardware and software components that supports multiple factory-configured applications.

These standard components (processors, chassis, I/O and configuration environment) are designed to be configured different systems ranging from triple-modular redundant (T) to dual-redundant (D), in a DCS or a PLC configuration.

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