Automation and safety system for LNG

Yokogawa has been selected to supply the integrated automation and safety system for the new liquefaction trains at Cheniere’s LNG facility in Sabine Pass, (LA USA), which is being developed by its Cheniere subsidiary Sabine Pass Liquefaction, LLC (SPL).

SPL is the first company with US Department of Energy approval to export liquefied natural gas (LNG) to non-Free Trade Agreement countries. The development of liquefaction services at the Sabine Pass LNG receiving terminal in Cameron Parish, LA, will transform the terminal into a bi-directional facility capable of liquefying and exporting natural gas and importing and re-gasifying foreign-sourced LNG.

“We are proud to be part of this groundbreaking liquefaction project in the US”, says Chet Mroz, President and CEO of Yokogawa Corporation of America: “Yokogawa has a 25% worldwide market share for LNG plants as well as a long-standing relationship with Cheniere Energy, beginning with their purchase of Yokogawa’s CENTUM(R) CS 3000 control system for the original gasification facility at Sabine Pass in 2006.”

Yokogawa’s CENTUM VP integrated production control system was selected for the new liquefaction facility. While CENTUM VP is classified as a distributed control system (DCS), it goes beyond a traditional DCS by offering a more intuitive human-machine interface and a large-capacity field control station to process data faster while maintaining exceedingly high reliability. The dual-redundant configuration of processor cards combined with pairing each processor card with two CPUs (“pair & spare” configuration) ensures uninterrupted operation and high availability.

SPL will also utilise the ProSafe(R)-RS integrated safety instrumented system (SIS) from Yokogawa for the site. ProSafe-RS delivers the world’s first completely integrated SIS for DCS to simplify deployment, operation, and maintenance. Until now, two separate monitoring and operating environments were required for the DCS and SIS. ProSafe-RS eliminates the need to implement separate communications and distinctive hardware architectures for the DCS and SIS, thus fast-tracking implementation at Sabine Pass, lowering overall costs, and simplifying operation and maintenance.