Rotork is supplying three coal seam gas-to-LNG projects in Queensland, Australia with over 5000 valve actuators, embracing electric, electro-hydraulic, pneumatic and gas-over-oil technologies

The end clients – Queensland Curtis LNG, Santos GLNG and Australia Pacific LNG – are developing coal seam gas in Queensland’s Surat and Bowen Basins.

Hundreds of kilometres of pipelines will link the natural gas production wells on the Queensland mainland with an LNG production plant under construction on Curtis Island. This will initially produce more than 27,000ktpa million tonnes of LNG for export.

For the upstream mainland wellheads, HART-enabled Rotork CVA modulating electric actuators have been ordered for process valve control at an eventual total of 2000 widely distributed sites.

In addition to natural gas, CVA actuators will also control the flow on the extraction process for coal seam water. This resource will be treated for use by agricultural and industrial customers as well as supplementing domestic water supplies.

CVA actuators deliver continuous, repeatable modulating control with a programmable fail to position option, said Rotork. Resolution, repeatability and hysteresis performance is quoted at less than 0.1% of full scale, offering suitability for demanding control valve applications.

CVA electric actuation can remove the cost of using instrument air supplies at these remote sites, where the pressure of the gas itself is too low to provide a viable source for actuator operation. They are also preferred because electric actuation eliminates the release of any environmentally harmful gas into the atmosphere during valve operations, added Rotork.

Nearly 1000 Rotork Skilmatic SI and EH range electro-hydraulic actuators have been ordered for control valves, shutdown valves, wellhead skids and metering skids. These self-contained actuators are said to combine electrical operation with the modulating precision of hydraulic actuation and the reliability of mechanical failsafe motion.

Designed to SIL3 standards for use in safety critical applications, these actuators are also programmable for partial stroke testing, enabling valves to be tested without interrupting routine processes.

The orders for Rotork electric actuators are completed with IQ actuators for various isolating valve automation duties. All the Rotork electric actuator ranges feature advanced and user-friendly non-intrusive programming and commissioning technologies, combined with integral data logging, diagnostics and asset management capabilities.

The balance of Rotork orders on this giant project involves fluid power actuators for the pipeline and the LNG plants on Curtis Island. The majority of these are CP and GP range pneumatic actuators operating butterfly valves on LNG production lines. The actuators are customised with control packages to meet specific operating duties, including SIL2 and SIL3 applications.

The remainder are GO range gas-over-oil actuators, most of which are for the large mainline pipeline shutdown valves. GO actuators are designed to use the pressure of the pipeline gas as the motive power source. Integral control functions facilitate a wide range of duties, usually safety related and including line break, low pressure close, high differential inhibit and ESD.

The orders were received at Rotork offices in Australia, China, Singapore, Italy and the US, with the company's global organisation co-ordinating manufacture and supply from various production centres around the world. In Australia, Rotork has moved to larger premises in order to fully support the Queensland projects.

Burmeister & Wain Energy A/S (BWE) is to supply a grate fired biomass boiler for the new straw-fired power plant of Brigg Renewable Energy in the UK. The plant is scheduled for start-up early in 2016.

The contract is being delivered by BWE in cooperation with Burmeister & Wain Scandinavian Contractor (BWSC) of Denmark – the main contractor for design and turnkey supply of the plant.

BWE and BWSC have previously worked together on the Sleaford biomass plant (pictured) in the UK. The plant is now in the commissioning phase.

The biomass power plant in Brigg is of the same type and is able to burn straw and up 50% wood chips, with a generation capacity of 40MWe.

BWE claims to be a world leader of the straw firing technology for biomass power plants. The company has common roots with BWSC in the old B&W shipyard, which was founded in Copenhagen 175 years ago.

Article by Amaechi Oduah, marketing manager, Mitsubishi Electric UK:

Wage and consumption levels are rising in the developing economies of Asia, including China. This is opening up an enormous market to UK machine builders and automation engineers who can help them keep production costs down.

At a recent UK Machine Builder conference, hosted by Mitsubishi Electric, strategies for entering Asia and China and building sustainable business were explored.

The great rush into Asia has been underway for some years but until recently the call for manufacturing automation and production machinery had been relatively modest but now, with local labour rates increasing and domestic consumption growing, things are changing fast. In China there is a further twist in that the senior figures of national government are giving way to new leaders who are charged with growing and developing the internal economy of the country – and where China leads, its neighbours are likely to follow.

Throughout Asia much of the recent economic development has been around coastal ports, which provide easy access to export markets. In China development has concentrated on the eastern seaboard, leaving the vast interior to follow in later years.

When people leave agriculture to work in new manufacturing industries, they also move into urban environments where they were unable to grow their own food. This results in them buying food and the rise of retail activities, which quickly develops into the consumption of other goods and services too. Thus demand for manufactured goods and consumables develops alongside the export side of the economy.

This has been apparent in the Asian economies, where naturally wage levels have also increased. It was also inevitable that as industry developed it would be impossible for these countries to produce enough engineers, other professionals and skilled workers.

Economists call this the Lewis Turning Point, where people are no longer willing to work for very low wages because they have opportunities to change to higher paid jobs. In this way, Asia’s eventual need for automated production was predictable and put simply, its time has come.

It is also worth noting at this point that the vast interior regions of China are now developing too. They are some years behind the coastal region but their development will be quicker and more assured, so over time they will catch up.
Slowdown

There has been some worry that Asian growth has slowed in recent years. But to put this into perspective, the main engine, China, has slowed to 8 per cent! In the well developed coastal centres growth is down to 5% and 65% of its economy is now service, an indicator of a maturing economy – and an increasing need for automation!

In a developing country there is inevitably some resistance to importing goods and services. Furthermore the amount of help available to companies for translations, currency exchange, tariffs, visas etc will also be low and there is probably a culture of wanting to ‘buy local’. So in order to win business in Asia and China, overseas companies must have a strong USP or specialism.

Robert Doak, a conference speaker from UK Trade & Investment (UKTI), says that British companies may have their own technical USP but that collectively they are also very good at combining products and service/support:

“Some countries can supply excellent goods; others sell intellectual expertise. But few can achieve the goods and service mix of the UK,” he says. “This is a tremendous strength for machine builders, whose goods will probably need commissioning, regular servicing and frequent redevelopment to adapt to changing end-user demands.”

Doak is also keen to stress that exporting halfway around the world is not the sole preserve of big companies. “There are many opportunities for SMEs, and once established in China a steady stream of work is likely to develop. Getting set-up initially can seem dauntingly complicated, but good initial research and exploratory visits are the first steps. Then there are layers of help available from UKTI, trade associations, business councils, export agencies, all of which are invaluable.”

Another point raised by Doak was that many UK companies think only of China and forget its expansive neighbours, which also need the goods and services of international machine builders. The 10 or 12 nations south of China form a significant sized market, with a combined GDP (gross domestic product) of about US$2trillion (about one-third the size of China or four times the size of the UK). Also in the region are Japan (GDP US$5.5trillion) Korea (US$1trillion) and Hong Kong (US$0.25trillion), all of which are potential markets. Collectively Asia has a GDP comparable to the USA or the EU (US$15-17trillion).

Speaker Stewart Ferguson from the China-Britain Business Council focussed on China’s vast economy. He pointed out that it is not a unitary market, but that the different regions are semi-autonomous, and often culturally very different.

“The language of business throughout China is Mandarin,” he says. “But the local accents and dialects can be so pronounced that they are effectively different languages – even the Chinese sometimes have difficulty understanding people from other regions. There are also major differences in culture, attitudes and manners that you have to allow for if you travel across the country.”

China has a bewildering mix of private companies and state-owned enterprises. Most Chinese companies will only pay in the local currency and will make no effort to help suppliers import their goods. But it is worth noting that China also has many resident non-Chinese companies, so UK machine builders may find it easier to deal with or through these rather than setting up their own distribution arrangements.

UK companies also need to think about how they are going to repatriate their money out from Asia and to make sure they are able to cope with currency fluctuations. There is also the issue of local regulations and protecting intellectual property rights.

Another speaker was Grant Collier from the PPMA Group of automation-focused trade associations. His organisation is very pro-active in helping companies set up in China and has formalised procedures into its three-tiered Dragon Service.

“Our Silver Dragon provides support services, such as market overview research, translations, media contacts,” he says. “With Gold we make introductions, arrange business tours and build contact networks.

“Platinum is what really set us apart. We run an office in Shanghai and will recruit and employ people for clients. They have tenancy in our office and we manage their activities on your behalf. Thus we remove just about all the risks from that initial setting up period.”
Mitsubishi Electric in Asia

KBR Inc. is standardising on simulation software from Invensys, under a multi-year, multi-million dollar contract with the automation vendor.

The licensing agreement will see Invensys provide its SimSci PRO/II steady-state simulation software to help KBR accurately model its process technology. The engineering company uses this in designs for customers and in the technology it licenses to the hydrocarbon processing industry.

Invensys is to provide on-site guidance to help KBR transition from the previous software, according to said Tobias Scheele vice president, design, simulation and optimization for Invensys.

“KBR needed new functionality to support them while they transitioned from a previous simulation tool,” said Scheele. “Our Invensys developers worked hand-in-hand with the KBR team so that they can more accurately model and quickly deliver their processing technology to the market.”

Widely used in the refining industry, the PRO/II software supports process design, revamp and operational analysis activities.

“This mutually collaborative relationship and the valuable assistance they have provided during the transition will help us continue to safely deliver key projects for the benefit of our global customers and other stakeholders,” said John Derbyshire, president, KBR Technology