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“ The call on the digital walkie talkie is clearer and there is basically no background noise. I can tell who the other person is talking to me as soon as I listen. For emergency management personnel, this is important& rdquo; Dong Huan, a manager at the General Dispatch Room of Sinopec Jinling Branch (referred to as "Jinling Petrochemical"), said. They have implemented a digital trunking wireless scheduling communication system upgrade project for commonly used walkie talkies, from analog to digital, making changes in improving efficiency and safety production

Dong Huan and colleagues in the department view themselves as a key factor in the company's safety production; Gatekeeper&# quo;, They have been striving to adopt new technologies and new methods to improve work efficiency. In their view, walkie talkies, as a critical communication tool, are still indispensable in the 5G era despite facing challenges. Because this is a stable and reliable lifeline for safe production that can be relied on regardless of weather or environment

However, there are also various new demands for using walkie talkies. The maintenance personnel of Jinling Petrochemical bring around ten or more tools such as temperature measurement, vibration measurement, wrenches, and walkie talkies when they go out. From work to work, they walk ten to twenty thousand steps every day, and sometimes they also climb ladders and devices. The labor intensity can be imagined. How to achieve communication integration to free the hands of maintenance personnel and reduce their work intensity has become a concern for Dong Huan and colleagues

Through research on the needs of business and management departments, Jinling Petrochemical Information and Measurement Center, as the communication system construction and management department, has upgraded the company's wireless communication facilities from analog systems to digital systems

The production of the petrochemical industry has the characteristics of abundant infrastructure and supporting equipment, flammable and explosive working environment, and continuous production. Emergency response decision-making requires processing a large amount of accident related information in the shortest possible time, comprehensively and quickly allocating resources, and quickly organizing emergency rescue to minimize the losses caused by accidents

At the same time, the petrochemical industry is also improving production management efficiency, especially with the increase of production capacity and the expansion of factory areas, which puts forward high requirements for scheduling communication

Jinling Petrochemical purchased digital walkie talkies over a decade ago and implemented an upgrade project for the digital trunking wireless dispatch communication system in 2018, deploying an 8-carrier Motorola CapacityPlus digital trunking system

After the system upgrade, the working channels of all base stations have doubled, greatly improving the system's operational capability, expanding the signal coverage, and solving the drawbacks of close communication distance and frequent frequency interference when using the same frequency intercom working mode. It has achieved a communication mode of overall scheduling and command for the entire factory, which is suitable for group communication in multi device and multi team work scenarios and brings smooth and uninterrupted communication to various business departments. According to needs, a dispatch and command system can be set up in the general dispatch room to achieve the overall dispatch of the entire plant's walkie talkies, such as individual calls, group calls, and group calls. The walkie talkies can be remotely opened and killed, and all calls from walkie talkies can be recorded and managed. Communication bridging can be carried out for different groups (departments, workshops), allowing different units to communicate on the same channel

Our device has 4 units, with frequent communication between internal and external operations. It is necessary to always maintain the ability to speak and listen as you want, manage and schedule at different levels, and respond to every call. We now have seven or eight channels available, which is also what we need

—& mdash; Due to the limitations of simulation work methods, Gu Dacheng, a production unit manager at Jinling Petrochemical, can only ensure the communication needs of one channel per relay station, which cannot guarantee the use of more channels. This can easily cause interference and cannot achieve the communication needs of unified calling throughout the entire factory. The cluster system allows intercom calls to share limited wireless call channels, thereby improving the efficiency of channel and frequency utilization. The dynamic channel allocation characteristics of the CapacityPlus system bring efficient utilization of channel resources and efficient unified scheduling and management of the entire factory

Clear voice is essential for business departments such as dispatch rooms, chemical plants, and public engineering systems. The Motorola digital walkie talkie adopts the universal Digital Mobile Radio (DMR) standard, with industrial grade noise reduction, automatic feedback suppression, and automatic volume adjustment based on background noise, which can achieve better clarity

A workshop director at Jinling Petrochemical greatly appreciates its call recording function. In busy work, once mistakes occur, recordings can be retrieved to determine right and wrong, clarify responsibilities, and continuously optimize processes and improve management. The digitization of wireless intercom brings richer scheduling functions, from call recording to Bluetooth positioning and work order management

It is worth mentioning that this system also has sufficient explosion-proof capabilities. In the face of flammable and explosive working environments such as petrochemical industry, two models of explosion-proof machines, GP328D+and GP338D+, have been adopted according to the different needs of users for the number of channels, to meet the needs of different levels of use. Due to the explosion-proof performance of many devices and the severe shielding of communication signals, fiber optic repeaters have been deployed to ensure communication coverage

Jinling Petrochemical is the third largest crude oil processing base of Sinopec, a clean gasoline and aviation kerosene production enterprise, and also a major detergent raw material production base in Asia. The company currently has a comprehensive crude oil processing capacity of 18 million tons/year, and more than 70 advanced production units such as refining, aromatics, thermoelectric, and alkylbenzene

Today, in the trend of Sinopec Group's Digital transformation and upgrading, Jinling Petrochemical is also thinking about building an integrated communication system to eliminate information silo to help optimize processes, reduce costs and increase efficiency. Dong Huan, Gu Dacheng, and colleagues from Jinling Petrochemical, including Huang Xiangyun, the director of the water purification work area of the Public Works Department, also put forward higher requirements for wireless intercom

From the perspective of maintenance requirements alone, we can glimpse the evolution direction of wireless communication. In the petrochemical industry, process is the foundation and cornerstone& ldquo; Let's go, check the process& rdquo; It is the catchphrase of many external operators at Jinling Petrochemical. An old master of Jinling Petrochemical often said to future generations:; Keep your eyes, ears, nose, hands, and brain aligned for watch keeping and inspection, and ensure that your safety is not careless at all& rdquo; Faced with the business needs of refined management, how technological changes can help inspectors liberate their hands, reduce labor intensity, and even achieve intelligent inspection has become a topic in front of all stakeholders

Based on these needs, Gu Dacheng hopes that the walkie talkie will be lighter, the battery life will be longer, and the charging will be faster. Huang Xiangyun looks forward to full coverage anywhere. Dong Huan pointed out the general trend of digital intelligence integration

From frontline feedback to the strategic deployment of Sinopec headquarters, it is driving technological changes in the fields of communication and command and dispatch at Jinling Petrochemical& ldquo; Fourteenth Five; During this period, Chinese stone

It will thoroughly implement the strategic deployment requirements of developing Industrial Internet and promoting intelligent manufacturing, and comprehensively improve the digital, networked and intelligent level of the Group's operation

Faced with the overall deployment of Sinopec and the needs of its business departments, Jinling Petrochemical Information and Metrology Center is also conducting research based on practicality and foresight. How to realize wide and narrow band fusion to eliminate information silo? How to simplify the process and improve scheduling efficiency? How to integrate audio, video, and data to achieve intelligent scheduling? How to protect the investment value of existing assets in digital upgrades? These issues have brought new driving forces and posed new challenges to Motorola Systems, Nanjing Netcom, and many companies deeply involved in the communication industry

The era of digital 2.0 has arrived. Jinling Petrochemical, Sinopec, and even the Chinese industrial community are entering the track of digital intelligence integration, with a long way to go and infinite exploration

Wen/Wu Fubiao, Su Kaiqing

Image/Su Kaiqing

This article is reprinted from "China Petroleum and Petrochemical"