Fuel polishing and transfer panels for a site you can't easily get to

The requirement

Control for a complete fuel polishing and transfer system: two container polishing units, a pumphouse polishing unit, a pumphouse transfer unit, a heater panel for the containers and a slave panel that gathers the status of every unit and passes it to the site's BMS and SCADA. Each polishing unit runs duty and standby pumps on a timer, alternating at each start and swapping on a trip, with differential pressure switches on both filters, particle counters on the fuel and leak sensors under the pumps and in the container. The transfer unit fills from tank level signals and drives an actuated valve and a solenoid valve.

The constraints

• A remote overseas site: sensors and site attendance were by others, so the panels had to arrive right and be supportable from the UK.
• Every unit reporting to one slave panel. The customer asked for each panel to run straight back to it rather than be daisy-chained, so we re-priced the slave for four fibre connections.
• Safety on every unit: emergency stops on the panel and the container door, fire alarm shutdown, high and low temperature, and a high-high level on the transfer unit that stops it even in Hand.
• A no-flow alarm that does something useful: swap pumps after five seconds without flow, stop after ten.

What we built

Six panels in steel enclosures with door-interlocked isolators, quoted at IP65. The polishing, transfer and slave panels run on Siemens LOGO! controllers with analogue and I/O expansion, with a Siemens safety relay for the emergency stops and IDEC touchscreens: seven-inch on the polishing and transfer panels, ten-inch on the slave. The screens show the particle count alarm thresholds, and the slave shows the status of the whole system. Network switches and fibre links tie the units to the slave, with remote access for support. We wrote the PLC and touchscreen software for all of them.

Delivery

Enquiry in June 2023, order in late September and despatch in late November, about two months from order. When the system was commissioned the following spring we worked through the site's findings with the customer on video calls: we updated the software, sent a replacement power supply and a spares list, and added two things they asked for once it was running, a combined fuel leak alarm and a forced switch to manual-off after any fault.

The outcome

A system run from one place, supported from the UK. The customer has placed more than thirty orders with us since 2023, and now buys our standard fuel polishing and transfer panels: twelve of them between June and September 2026, typically turned round in one to three weeks.