ABB has won an order from Zhejiang Petroleum & Chemical to supply ProcessMaster FEP600 electromagnetic flowmeters with Ethernet-APL connectivity for a petrochemical production upgrade in China.
The flowmeters will be installed in a chemical production facility within the Zhoushan Green Petrochemical Base on Yushan Island. The wider complex has a total refining capacity of 40 million tonnes per year, while the facility covered by the order has annual production capacity of 450,000 tonnes of adipic acid.
Adipic acid is a key raw material used in nylon 66, speciality engineering plastics, and polyurethane. Those downstream materials connect the project to automotive, industrial components, textiles, coatings, construction products, and engineered plastics markets.
ABB’s ProcessMaster flowmeters will monitor high-temperature, corrosive acidic fluids across pipe sizes from DN15 to DN300. The instruments use PFA lining technology to protect the meter body, maintain measurement accuracy, and support equipment life in aggressive process conditions.
The Ethernet-APL instrumentation will enable high-speed, real-time transmission of field data across the facility. A single two-wire cable provides power and high-speed Ethernet-APL communication, supporting intrinsic safety protection and reliable data transmission over distances of up to 1,000m.
A representative of Zhejiang Petroleum & Chemical said: “We aim to fully leverage the enhanced data sensing and transmission capabilities inherent in ABB instrumentation. This will improve our understanding of operating conditions and enable smart and more efficient operations.”
Jacques Mulbert, president of ABB’s Measurement & Analytics division, said: “Ethernet-APL is increasingly the most common communication technology in industrial applications with intrinsic safety. Through this collaboration, we will support Zhejiang in enabling smart operations, advanced diagnostics, and proactive maintenance.”
The order builds on ABB’s earlier delivery of Ethernet-APL VortexMaster and SwirlMaster flowmeters to Zhejiang and Rongsheng Petrochemical, both part of Rongsheng Group. The FEP600 electromagnetic flowmeter series is used across petrochemical and chemical industries where measurement reliability must be maintained under demanding process conditions.
Ethernet-APL is designed to bring Ethernet communication deeper into process plants, including hazardous areas, while preserving intrinsic safety. Many field instruments still operate within architectures that restrict data rates, limit diagnostic visibility, or make integration more complex than modern asset management systems require. Higher-speed field communication changes how process data can be used.
Richer instrumentation data supports earlier warning of drift, fouling, corrosion, abnormal flow, instrument wear, and process instability. Maintenance teams can use diagnostics to plan intervention before failure, while process engineers can use better data for optimisation, energy efficiency, yield improvement, and quality control. In high-volume chemical plants, even small improvements in process visibility can affect uptime and product consistency.
Digital field instrumentation also changes commissioning and lifecycle management. Device configuration, verification, troubleshooting, and replacement can become more efficient when instruments provide more complete status information and can be integrated cleanly into plant systems. Those gains depend on network architecture, cybersecurity, interoperability, and staff competence as much as on the field device itself.
Hazardous area operation keeps the engineering requirements high. Petrochemical plants cannot compromise ignition protection, cabling rules, device approval, or maintenance discipline in pursuit of better data. Technologies that combine intrinsic safety with faster communication are therefore likely to gain attention across chemicals, oil and gas, pharmaceuticals, water, and other process industries.
ABB’s project with Zhejiang Petroleum & Chemical shows Ethernet-APL moving further into large-scale industrial application. Its value will be measured in safer integration, better diagnostics, more reliable measurement, and the ability to turn field data into plant decisions that improve availability and efficiency.
