🚀 Rompetrol Rafinare Reduced Alarm Load by 95% with Emerson!

[Cengiz Özemli]

Petromidia, Romania's largest refinery, has reduced its distributed control system (DCS) alarm volumes by over 95% thanks to Emerson's DeltaV AgileOps software! This achievement has improved operator efficiency while bringing the refinery's alarm rates in line with EEMUA 191 guidelines.

🚨 Escape from the Alarm Flood​

With an annual processing capacity of 5.5 million tons of fuel products, the Petromidia refinery, boasting a high Nelson Complexity Index (9.32), generated a large amount of process data and alarms. Over time, control system alarms deviated from recommended best practices, exposing operators to high alarm volumes, especially during plant upsets. Constantly sounding alarms made it difficult for operators to identify and respond to critical process events.

🛠️ The Solution: DeltaV AgileOps​

Rominserv, Rompetrol's engineering and maintenance services provider, collaborated with Emerson to overcome these challenges. Emerson's DeltaV AgileOps software provided continuous visibility into alarm performance, including average and peak alarm rates, recurring alarm sequences, and time spent outside recommended operating thresholds.

📊 Data-Driven Improvement​

The DeltaV AgileOps software captured alarm and event data directly from the plant's DeltaV DCS, allowing engineering teams to identify "bad actor" alarms responsible for high-frequency, stale, and disproportionate alarm activity. Using performance dashboards and historical trending tools, refinery personnel evaluated alarm behavior during steady-state operation, startup conditions, and process disturbances. This enabled proposed changes to alarm limits, priorities, and suppression strategies to be validated against actual plant data.

📈 Striking Results​

As a result of the project, the refinery reduced alarm generation from over two million alarms per month during normal operation to fewer than 50,000 alarms per month. According to EEMUA 191 guidelines, operators should not receive more than one alarm every ten minutes during steady-state operation.

🗣️ Feedback from Executives​

Nilca George, Director of Process Engineering at Rompetrol Rafinare, stated, "Alarm management plays a critical role in maintaining safe and efficient refinery operations. The continuous alarm performance monitoring and analysis provided by DeltaV AgileOps significantly reduced operator alarm load while increasing overall operational awareness."

Guido Wink, Vice President of Emerson's European Control Systems and Software Business Unit, added, "DeltaV AgileOps helps organizations continuously monitor and improve their alarm system performance, so operators can focus on the most important events for safe and efficient operation."

⏳ Long-Term Benefits​

The implementation also increased long-term visibility into control system performance through automated alarm and event reporting. The existing historical alarm and event retention period was extended from approximately four to five days to almost two months. This supported more effective analysis of recurring issues and more informed maintenance and optimization decisions.