Wireless technologies used at PEMEX Tula Refinery

Representaciones y Montajes S.A. de C.V., a system integrator, worked with Belden field engineers to develop an industrial wireless implementation at the PEMEX Tula Refinery despite physical challenges. Technologies used include...

Ricardo Velázquez Espinosa, Rafael Montandon Spinoso

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Representaciones y Montajes S.A. de C.V. (RYMSA), a system integrator located in Mexico City, worked with Belden field engineers to develop a solution that would provide for strong, clear signals at the PEMEX Tula Refinery despite physical challenges.

To provide the solution, signals from monitoring devices within the cooling towers are transmitted through Rosemount wireless devices deployed in a star topology into an Emerson Wireless Gateway 1420 located in the satellite room. The gateway is connected to a Hirschmann BAT54-F X2 Bridge/Access Point via a PoE Layer 2 Spider Switch. The signals pass through an industrial Ethernet point-to-point 5.8 GHz wireless link to another BAT54-F X2 Access Point located near the operations center located 500 to 600 meters away. Other BAT54-F X2 Access Points are installed in various locations around the refinery to provide a communication backbone that supports point-to-point and point-to-multipoint wireless Ethernet connections. Dual-radio design allows the BAT54-F X2 Access Point to act as a repeater or bridge as necessary as Figure 3 shows.

RYMSA used Hirschmann’s Industrial HiVision and LAN Monitor network management software with managed Hirschmann switches to evaluate signal quality and strength measurements during the process of positioning and aligning the antennas.

Using a variety of Hirschmann IP65-rated antennas (omnidirectional, directional, and sector antennas) covers the performance and bandwidth needs of the facility.

Using Hirschmann network management and monitoring software (see Figure 4), RYMSA installers and PEMEX operators easily discovered and configured network components, and thus reduced overall project costs; RYMSA estimated that use of the tool reduced the amount of programming time required to develop and configure the network by 30%, when compared to traditional command-line interface (CLI) configuration through a serial console.

- Ricardo Velázquez Espinosa is Industrial Networking Solutions Manager, Mexico & CA, at Belden Inc., and Rafael Montandon Spinoso is project manager at RYMSA. Velázquez can be reached at ricardo.velazquez(at)belden.com. Montandon can be reached at rafael.montandon@rymsa.org. Edited by Mark T. Hoske, content manager CFE Media, Control Engineering, Plant Engineering, and Consulting-Specifying Engineer. Hoske can be reached at mhoske(at)cfemedia.com. 

http://controleng.com/wireless

www.rymsa.org 

www.belden.com/products/browse/routersswitches/industrial-wireless.cfm 

Wireless monitoring, asset protection... has additional diagrams and photos. See link below.