South African plant wins annual Hart award

A Hart Communication Foundation product story

Edited by the Engineeringtalk editorial team Nov 21, 2005

The Sasol Solvents and O and S SMG Operations plant in Sasolburg, South Africa, has been selected as recipient of the 2005 Hart Plant of the Year Award.

The Sasol Solvents and O and S SMG Operations plant in Sasolburg, South Africa, has been selected as recipient of the 2005 Hart Plant of the Year Award.

The award is given annually to recognise the people, companies and plant sites around the globe that are using the full capabilities of Hart technology in real-time applications to improve operations, lower costs and increase availability.

The Sasol plant uses Hart communication for full-time monitoring of 3500 Hart-enabled instruments and control valves.

According to Sasol E/I Manager Johan Claassen, one of their main project objectives was to move from a "run-to-failure" maintenance philosophy to a predictive maintenance strategy.

The goal was to lower fixed costs and to avoid or prevent unscheduled plant shutdowns by using device diagnostics to warn of pending problems.

"The biggest benefit of using the Hart protocol is the capability to access online device diagnostic information from our intelligent Hart-enabled devices and control valves", says Claassen.

"We have realised more than US $2 million in documented savings to date and will continue to enhance our use of Hart and to expand on its benefits going into the future".

The Sasol Solvents group of plants produces commodity chemicals, mainly solvents used in paints and inks.

The process converts propylene into n-butanol, iso-butanol and crude acrylic acid and produces derivatives such as glacial (high purity) acrylic acid, ethyl acrylate and butyl acrylate.

"If I had to use one word to describe the Hart Communication Protocol, it would be 'brilliant'".

"Hart is the next technology phase after pneumatic, electronic 4-20mA and DCS", says Classen.

"Hart improves the way we do maintenance".

"It helps me do my job better because I can login in the morning and get a health status on all my instruments".

"It frees up my time to do things I just couldn't do before".

"We congratulate Sasol for taking the capabilities of their Hart-enabled instrumentation beyond configuration and calibration to improve operations and optimise asset productivity", says HCF Executive Director Ron Helson.

"Their success not only benefits their company but also serves as a powerful model for industry users worldwide on the benefits of using the advanced capabilities of Hart technology".

The Lonza biopharmaceutical manufacturing plant in Visp, Switzerland was selected as a 2005 Hart Plant of the Year finalist.

The 100-year-old facility produces 75% of the world's Niacin and is using 1300 Hart-enabled devices in an all-digital mode.

The plant uses Hart communication to improve loop accuracy, to speed up device configuration and to better document and validate the device configuration.

The Hart Plant of the Year is a unique award in the process automation industry.

It is the only public award presented to /end user/ companies to recognise ingenuity in the application of Hart Communication technology.

The award showcases end user companies and their suppliers who have demonstrated creativity in using the full capabilities of Hart Communication technology.

The HCF encourages nominations for Hart Plant of the Year from all world areas.

Nominations are accepted through May of each year.

Previous recipients are the BP Cooper River Plant in Wando, South Carolina and the Clariant Antioxidants Plant in Gersthofen, Germany (2004), the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department in Detroit, Michigan (2003), and the Dont DeLisle manufacturing facility in Pass Christian, Missouri (2002).