Implementing China’s Modernization
Gas Station IC Card System

Project
To cope with the challenges brought about by China’s involvement in the WTO, the country’s state-owned China Petroleum and Chemical Corporation (Sinopec) sought to improve its service by introducing an electronic IC card payment system to replace the traditional cash, oil coupon and other payment modes. The fuel IC card system is large and complex; it spans multiple platforms and covers over 35,000 gas stations in the 20 provinces where Sinopec has deployed business operations.

The system topology is composed of four layers: the headquarters layer (including Sinopec general management center and general data exchange center), the provincial layer (provincial management and provincial data exchange), the prefectural layer (prefectural management and data exchange), and service terminals at gas stations and card issuance points. Each gas station is equipped with one industrial PC (IPC) that enables electronic payments, collects and sends sales data, and implements management and monitoring functions. With years of proven excellence in this area, Advantech was awarded contracts for a great majority of the gas station terminal PC’s for the Sinopec IC card project.

Requirements
‧High stability and reliability
‧Optimum performance/price ratio 
‧System expandability
‧Guaranteed maintenance and service support

System
Stability and reliability is naturally a major concern in this IC card project, especially since many of the filling stations are located in remote, mountainous areas, which makes the repair and maintenance of computers troublesome.Advantech’s IPC solution for the Sinopec gas station terminals involves a 4U IPC-610 chassis supporting a PCA-6010 full-size CPU card. Powered by LGA775 Core™2 Duo processor, PCA-6010 scores a maximum speed of 3.06 GHz, and is one of Advantech’s best-selling Core™2 Duo PICMG 1.0 single board computers. To ensure reliability, each and every system must pass a grueling 72-hour burn-in test before installation.

In the countryside, rural power grids are more often subject to overvoltage, undervoltage, or surges, which throw additional challenges at computers and their power supplies. The IPC-610 / PCA-6010 system supports a 300W/ATX power supply with a power factor self-correction function that allows the computer to work smoothly with voltages ranging all the way from 95V to 264V. And our IPC in this project is provided with a Promise RAID card that combines two hard disks of the same specifications into a Raid 1 array, providing total backup functionality. This further ensures system security and reliability.

As the number of gas pumps in the filling stations varies from 2 to more than 30, system expandability is also important. The IPC-610 is provided with four PCI and nine ISA slots, so expansion needs are covered.

Conclusion
Since the Sinopec IC card project was implemented in June 2006, Advantech’s IPC controllers have proved to be highly stable and reliable in widely varied environments and locations. With proven expertise and experience in industrial computers, Advantech was able to provide rugged, reliable, and high-performance products suitable for all kinds of harsh environments. Advantech is also the only IPC manufacturer that has established a nationwide maintenance and service system in China.

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