Page 28 - SAPREF 50 year

“The new Control Room was officially opened on 30 November 1998. This brought under one roof three critical areas — Production Management, Work Control and the Central Control Room — facilitating communication between people belonging”to the three areas and enabling them to stay constantly in close touch.
A view of one of the old control panels showing the in-line blending station alarms and the temperature console.
Control Rooms: Nerve centre of the refinery
The whole refinery is now controlled from one Control Room. Being all under one roof, communication between the different panel operators is simple, and this makes for a more efficient operation — but it was not always like this.
Pat Boddy, who has been at the refinery for more than 30 years, remembers the first control room was located where the Penex unit is now situated. It boasted the latest analogue technology when installed in 1963. “Some of the instruments were fitted with rotating drums of paper, on which an ink pen traced the readings with time. The technologist of the day would have to go onto the plant every day and take a variety of readings; he would then go back to his office and, using
a slide rule (one of the most sophisticated calculation aids that was available at that time), calculate the actual flows to perform the mass balance and then make recommendations to the panelmen. This process took hours. Today, of course, technologists can see how any plant is operating on their computer screens in
their office in real time.”
Old hands recall that the Pross System,
which was installed in 1985 and which supervised the entire refinery (operating, mass balances and data logging) and in fact carried out some basic control functions (e.g. coil balancing), had less power than your average smartphone today.
In 1990 a blast-proof Control Room building was erected. The December 1990 issue of Columns magazine tells us that the state- of-the-art control room with touch-screen displays cost R70million, had two entirely separate air-conditioning systems and three back-up electricity systems, and that extensive ergonomic studies were done before decisions were made on such things as seating, desks, glass colour, carpeting and sound-deadening panels.
The reinstrumentation programme started in 1988. The purpose of reinstrumentation was to enable the refinery to switch from using analogue to digital controls, specifically the DCS (Honeywell’s Distributed Control System).
Over the next ten years each unit in turn upgraded its instruments and moved to the
new Control Room. The Luboil instrument changeover, for example, took place in 1995 and cost R25million. A tradition at SAPREF is that when a control room closes down, the Managing Director chauffeurs the panelman from the old Control Room across to the new Control Room. In this case, it was Peter Fransen who chauffeured Tim Moodley.
The new Control Room was officially opened on 30 November 1998 by the then Premier of KwaZulu-Natal, Dr Ben Ngubane. This brought under one roof three critical
areas — Production Management, Work Control and the Central Control Room — facilitating communication between people belonging
to the three areas and enabling them to stay constantly in close touch. The building included a new canteen and management offices.
SAPREF: FUELLING SA FOR 50 YEARS
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