Sinopec Tianjin partners with Huawei to explore intelligent factories

The global energy landscape is currently undergoing seismic changes, and China's ongoing need for refined petroleum products is creating both challenges and opportunities for its energy industry. Major petroleum and petrochemical companies are seeking new development paths to improve efficiency, ensure security, and promote technological innovation. The refining industry in particular is embracing new ICT technologies in the hope of going digital and eventually realizing an intelligent transformation and upgrade.

Sinopec started building intelligent factories over a decade ago. It has gathered extensive practical experience in planning and scheduling collaboration, as well as in intelligent production, warehousing, and logistics. This has left it well-positioned to explore intelligent refinery systems.

Full 5G Connectivity Facilitates Intelligent Production of Oil Refineries.

5G is not a new concept in the oil and gas industry. As early as 2021, a collection of government agencies in China jointly released the 5G Application Implementation Plan in the Energy Field, which emphasized the importance of 5G as a strategic resource that can be used to build new infrastructure for energy transformation.

Sinopec Tianjin's Nangang Ethylene Project is one of the key energy transformation projects listed in China's 14th Five-Year Plan. From the very beginning, Sinopec Tianjin decided to integrate intelligent scenarios and engineering projects into its Nangang campus through "synchronous design, construction, and use". This approach has enabled Sinopec Tianjin to create a digital twin that is an exact replica of the physical factory. The digital twin facilitates digital delivery/intake and engineering control in the construction phase and enables in-depth application of the campus platform in the operation phase. This has allowed them to integrate engineering construction and intelligent factory operations, enabling the digitalization of physical factories and visualized on-site management.

5G is an important part of Sinopec Tianjin's intelligent factory. According to Gao Wenqing, the company's chief informatization expert, the company’s intelligent factory project relies on an ICT infrastructure made up of 5G networks, UPF, BeiDou satellite positioning, and NB-IoT. It also uses multiple supporting technologies such as BIM, VR, and GIS in its "5G + BeiDou" intelligent campus to synergize monitoring, management, display, and interaction functions. Integrating 5G technologies into petrochemical production and management scenarios unlocks new efficiencies by combining data and management flows. It resolves various issues encountered during intelligent transformation and helps realize real-time transparent production and management.

Safety management is both the top priority and the first task of refinery development. Sinopec Tianjin has implemented an electronic work permit system to strengthen on-site safety management. Compared to traditional paper permits, this system uses 5G-powered and explosion-proof portable terminals to speed up operations. The high-precision combination of 5G and BeiDou satellite positioning also ensures workers can't clock in or out unless they are within one meter of their work area. This makes it much harder to forge or improperly issue safety inspection and permit records off-site.

Unfortunately, non-compliant operations are a common and easily overlooked aspect of safety management. With 5G, on-site operation videos can be transmitted directly to the cloud, where AI-powered recognition and big data analysis can be utilized to establish models for analyzing non-compliant operations, such as PPE violations, and non-compliance with standard operating procedures. The analysis of abnormal behaviors and scenes makes early warnings, real-time alarms, and post-incident tracing much easier. This automated on-site operation management is significantly more effective than manual operations.

For example, Sinopec Tianjin now uses a 5G-powered intelligent recognition system to detect fires in its installations. This system rapidly identifies, analyzes, and autonomously evaluates flame characteristics in videos collected by key devices installed in high-risk areas, such as those where temperatures regularly run above 220°C and where there is a high susceptibility to corrosion or chemical leaks, as well as around storage tanks, loading and unloading platforms, hot oil pumps, and high-temperature pipelines. When a fire is detected, the system immediately sends out an alarm, reducing the need for manual inspections. This means that safety teams can take action before the fire gets out of control.

Sinopec Tianjin has also implemented a series of intelligent applications in its warehousing, safety management, environmental protection detection, intelligent process control (IPC), and remote employee training. The construction of intelligent factories can comprehensively improve operational decision-making efficiency, production efficiency, safety and environmental protection, collaborative development capabilities, and enterprise development capabilities.

Improving Intelligent Factory Construction

If we compare an intelligent factory to a highway, then 5G technologies are like the roadbed, ICT infrastructure is the road surface, and various business applications are the vehicles. A reliable and stable road is key to worry-free vehicle operations.

Digital platforms: Traditional application development models often result in fragmented management, data silos, and scattered resources. By building a digital twin industrial Internet platform featuring cloud-edge-device collaboration, rapid application development, and highly reliable assurance are made available for all services. With this platform, cloud-native service applications can speed up service deployment by reducing service provisioning time from months to weeks.

Computing and storage resources: Intelligent algorithms and models improve the intelligent analysis and decision-making capabilities of refineries. A "partitioning + layering + plane division + security" design not only supports the migration of existing service systems such as production and sales collaboration to the cloud and the deployment of new services, but also reserves redundant resources to support future service evolution without needing new investment.

Networks: Wired and wireless integration simplifies network O&M. A single Space-Air-Ground Integrated Network (SAGIN) can support both office and production services, and allow for unified O&M. This better integrates OT and IT services and solves multiple issues such as inaccurate fault locating and the difficult O&M on traditional refining service networks.

Intelligent factories with digital twins combine engineering construction and factory operations. Building a data resource center with digital twins can create a unified data foundation, whilst digital delivery can enable industrial Internet platforms that bring together the strengths of cloud, edge, and devices. Together, these components have been used to build the "super brain" behind Sinopec Tianjin's intelligent factories, making Sinopec Tianjin a new model of intelligent development in the petrochemical industry.