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Product category: Shutdown, SIS and safety systems
News Release from: Intertec Instrumentation | Subject: Kirishi cabinets
Edited by the Processingtalk Editorial Team on 30 January 2008

ESD valve fire protection cabinets

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Intertec is supplying over 100 fire protection cabinets to support Emerson ESD valve instrumentation at the new hydrocracker complex on the Kirishi oil refinery near St Petersburg, Russia

The cabinets will provide the valve actuators with a minimum of 30 minutes of protection against fire, so that the plant emergency shut down systems and services can quickly isolate and minimise damage, to protect employees, assets and environment The cabinets are made from high-quality glass-fibre reinforced polyester (GRP)

This material is very stable and highly resistant to corrosion from the petrochemical media at the plant.

A proprietary construction process developed by Intertec allows the company to fabricate the material into complex enclosure shapes, and the new cabinets are variations of a field-proven product known as the Intertec Fire Shelter.

Emerson Process Management is engaged as Field Instrumentation Vendor for the new hydrocracking complex at the Kirishi refinery, a subsidiary of Surgutneftegas.

Emerson chose Intertec because no off-the-shelf solution existed for this application, and because of previous experience with the vendor.

The cabinets will house valve actuators that are critical to plant operation and fail-safe shutdown.

They have been fabricated using a sandwich construction of non-combustible insulation and long fibre reinforced GRP sheeting.

This provides the required fire protection time, but with the added advantages of high strength, very high resistance to weather and the possible corrosive effects of the chemicals produced at the plant.

This Intertec technology offers a more efficient alternative to traditional metal fire protection cabinets because of its much lower thermal conductivity.

To validate performance before installation, the independent Russian institution, Pozhaudit, tested an example cabinet.

The test demonstrated that the internal temperature did not rise above 60C for at least 30minutes when subjected to an oil based fire with a temperature of around 1000C.

Intertec is well known for its range of cabinets, shelters and accessories for field based industrial equipment.

It has developed and refined this fire protection technology over several years in order to offer process and plant engineers more efficient alternatives to traditional metal cabinets.

The company has a long list of application references in this field, as well as numerous documented tests, including results of its own testing, and testing to related standards including the demanding F30 to F120 fire resistance ratings of the German DIN 4102 (fire behaviour of building materials and building components) and UL94V-0 flammability ratings.

In addition to protecting against fire, the cabinets protect the actuators from weather extremes at this northern latitude.

The cabinets have been designed to suit the application, and include a panel opening to facilitate field inspection and maintenance.

"These cabinets have been custom-made for the application, to suit the chosen valve actuators, the fire protection specifications, and the weather conditions," says Intertec project manager, Klaus-Dieter Meyer: "Our flexible GRP manufacturing processes allow us to cost-effectively fabricate these custom designs, even for the relatively small volumes required.

This protection is required quite commonly, yet there are no Russian or German norms for the exact application.

So, to help plant engineers specify with confidence, we subjected our enclosures to detailed fire testing, using an array of sensors that showed the temperature at various internal points".

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