(EnergyAsia, June 23 2011, Thursday) — US engineering giant Honeywell said India’s Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Limited (HPCL) has implemented Honeywell Process Solutions’ mobile stations at their newly completed US$200 million fluid catalytic cracking unit (FCCU) refinery unit in Mumbai.

The mobile stations increase productivity and reduce operating costs of standard communication infrastructure by expediting the commissioning of different systems and subsystems.

Previously, HPCL experienced delays in commissioning activity associated with the use of handheld transceivers to communicate with the control room for operations such as transmitter testing, control valve stroke checking, loop checking, determining run indication status and mapping third party devices with DCS over modbus.

Honeywell said the use of its wireless mobile operator technology has enabled HPCL to expedite the schedule resulting in daily saving of US$333,000 while improving productivity by 20% during the commissioning phase of the FCCU project. The company has also enjoyed increased acceptance of more field-related applications using the same wireless network.

HPCL said: “Effective communications are essential in helping to minimise the commissioning delays and in turn reduce operating costs in our plants. Our longstanding relationship with Honeywell made the company a natural choice for this project, and the substantial cost reductions achieved to date have shown that they were the correct choice.”

Amitava Biswas, country manager for Honeywell Process Solutions India, said:

“Increasingly our customers are interested in taking advantage of the latest communications technologies for their operations. With our Mobile EPKS system, Hindustan Petroleum gains real-time communication, which is a critical capability when optimizing plant productivity and managing the bottom line.”

With annual revenues exceeding US$25 billion, HPCL operates two major refineries in India producing a combined annual output of 14.8 million metric tons of petroleum products.

Honeywell International is a Fortune 100 diversified technology and manufacturing leader, serving customers from many industries around the world.