Product category:
Plantwide control
News Release from: Emerson Process Management | Subject: DeltaV
Edited by the Engineeringtalk Editorial
Team on 04 December 2006
Digital automation upgrades silane
production
Emerson Process Management has completed a major automation upgrade of the silane unit in the REC Silicon plant, migrating the existing Provox control system to a DeltaV digital automation system.
Emerson Process Management has completed a major automation upgrade of the silane unit in the REC Silicon plant in Moses Lake, Washington, USA, migrating the company's existing Provox control system to a DeltaV digital automation system A new plant-wide MES network was installed that hosts an OSIsoft PI data historian
The project also included new AMS Suite predictive maintenance software, increasing the plant's visibility to the health status of the existing smart field instrumentation.
The Moses Lake facility produces solar-grade polysilicon for use in solar panels and devices, and includes two processing areas, silane and polysilicon.
"Given the large scope of this project, we experienced very few surprises", said Scott Brown, Operations Manager at Moses Lake for REC Silicon.
"The project team did a great job of keeping everyone on track and achieving the mission on time".
"We can be very demanding of our contractors and suppliers".
"Emerson delivered on our demands".
The scope of work for Emerson on the project included front end engineering design (FEED), hardware design, migration configuration, AMS Device Manager configuration, turnkey implementation, installation of a critical data backup server, and automation simulation services.
The DeltaV digital automation system is a core component of Emerson's open, standards-based PlantWeb digital plant architecture which features innovative technology that substantially reduces project costs.
The architecture's built-in predictive intelligence can improve plant operating efficiency by 2% or more.
PlantWeb services are key to helping customers derive full value from state-of-the-art control, automation and asset management predictive diagnostics, whether at the installation or operational phase of the project.
The Moses Lake project included installation of an extensive MES network.
The new 20,000 point PI Historian software is used for information gathering and analysis.
It integrates the plant's DeltaV system, Modicon PLCs, Provox and Oracle RDBS to provide real time information to business decision makers.
Emerson is OSIsoft's only Platinum VAR providing scaleable data management design and implementation services globally with local sales and support.
Production for the Moses Lake facility is in a sold-out position, so minimising turnaround time on the project was important.
The upgrade project began in August 2005 and was completed in May 2006.
While Moses Lake budgeted 10 days for the installation turnaround, actual downtime was limited to 6 days.
One main benefit of the upgrade was new visibility to existing intelligent field devices that used Hart protocol.
On startup, it was possible to quickly identify devices that required attention and recalibrate and/or respan these promptly.
"We are pleased to have been a part of the Moses Lake upgrade", said John Gardner, Senior Vice President of Emerson Process Management.
"It is gratifying that REC Silicon chose us for this project's broad scope of engineering services and products".
"Our close relationship and expertise working with OSIsoft's complementary products was a key factor in keeping the project's MES scope on track".
Emerson Process Management has dedicated industry consultants globally that have installed millions of OSIsoft PI tags.
The Emerson-OSIsoft strategic alliance provides customers with unprecedented value by allowing them access to real time information to quickly respond and take advantage of favourable market conditions as they arise.
The migration to the DeltaV system has been a great success and the upgrades were all completed within the time allowed for the shut down.
The Moses Lake facility has been identified for a doubling of capacity with completion expected in early 2008.
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