The control system acts as the "nervous system" of the process industry, playing a vital role in industrial digitalization. For many years, China's petrochemical and chemical sectors relied heavily on foreign multinational companies like Siemens, Emerson, and Honeywell for their control systems. However, in recent years, Chinese firms such as Zhejiang Zhongzhong Control Technology and Beijing Helishi System Engineering have made significant strides, rapidly capturing market share and achieving remarkable progress in the localization of advanced DCS (Distributed Control Systems). In early 2007, Zhongzhong’s independently developed DCS successfully won the bid for the Wuhan Petrochemical Refinery Renovation Project. It was deployed in the 5 million tons/year atmospheric and vacuum distillation unit, marking a major breakthrough for domestically produced automatic control systems in large-scale petrochemical plants. The project included four sets of 5 million tons/year atmospheric and vacuum units, one 1.9 million tons/year hydrorefining unit, one 1.2 million tons/year delayed coking unit, and one 60,000 tons/year sulfur recovery unit, with a total contract value of 46 million yuan. Looking ahead, Zhongzhong aims to localize control systems for 10 million-ton oil refining, million-ton ethylene, and PTA projects, as well as work on large-scale petrochemical integration and advanced control optimization technologies. In July of this year, General Secretary Hu Jintao visited Zhongzhong and encouraged the company to not only expand its domestic market but also go global, emphasizing the importance of independent innovation. According to Shi Yiming, assistant to the company president, Zhongzhong’s DCS has evolved over 14 years from a full-redundancy system to the current ECS-700 system with independent intellectual property rights (EPA). By the end of 2006, the company had successfully deployed over 5,126 systems (including DCS and APC) across various industries, with users in 30 provinces and cities in China, as well as in Southeast Asia, West Asia, Africa, and North America. Approximately 70% of these applications were in the chemical and petrochemical sectors, such as coal methanol, chlor-alkali, polypropylene, and nitrogen fertilizer. In 2006, the company achieved an output value of 1.05 billion yuan. In mid-August, Zhongzhong secured the DCS project for the polyphenylene sulfide (PPS) unit at Sichuan Deyang Science and Technology Co., marking a solid step forward in entering the special engineering plastics industry. At the end of June, the 30,000-ton/year epichlorohydrin project, led by Sinchem, was successfully commissioned. This marked the first use of Zhongzhong’s products on this type of equipment and the first deployment of domestic DCS on similar projects. In December 2006, Zhongzhong won the bid for the 200,000-ton/year PVC and 180,000-ton/year ion-exchange membrane caustic soda project at Yibin Haifeng Herui Co., marking the company’s entry into the PVC industry. In September 2006, Zhongzhong also won the DCS project for Shandong Yanzhou Mining Group’s Lunan Fertilizer Plant, which included 300,000 tons/year of synthetic ammonia and 520,000 tons/year of urea — the first application of domestic DCS on large-scale nitrogen fertilizer installations. Additionally, Beijing Helishi’s DCS has also gained widespread adoption in the chemical industry, with implemented or ongoing projects including 1 million tons/year of coke production, 600,000 tons/year diesel hydrorefining, 800,000 tons/year ion-exchange membrane caustic soda, 1 million tons/year vinyl chloride and polyvinyl chloride, 1 million tons/year phosphoric acid diamine, 200,000 tons/year methanol, 150,000 tons/year dimethyl ether, and 50,000 tons/year titanium dioxide.

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