Antibiotic plant takes fieldbus into Zone 1

Edited by the Engineeringtalk editorial team Mar 27, 2006

Profibus PA and DP fieldbus techniques have been applied to pharmaceutical manufacturing in an installation at the Aventis plant near Frankfurt.

Profibus PA and DP fieldbus techniques have been applied to pharmaceutical manufacturing in an installation at the Aventis plant near Frankfurt.

An existing facility manufacturing the antibiotic Ketek, used for the treatment of acute respiratory infection, was retrofitted so that all process instrumentation works over Profibus fieldbus systems in a Zone 1 hazardous area.

The only exceptions were the safety related signals, which were left working using conventional wiring techniques.

22 Profibus DP segments were used to connect to 250 motors and drives across the two production lines.

Then a total of 200 Profibus PA segments were used to interface with 1600 Profibus PA devices.

Segment couplers provide transmission of signals between the Profibus DP and PA segments, and their PowerLink modules supply up to 400mA power for devices on the PA segments.

For Zone 1 operation, a total of 470 Pepperl + Fuchs fieldbus barriers are installed on the plant, typically allowing for 12 Profibus PA devices to be connected via four of these barriers on each segment.

The 1600 Profibus PA devices included the existing conventional valves with position signalling, coupled to the bus using 190 valve boxes.

The plant instrumentation consists of 15 different types of device, from several separate vendors, for example devices were used from ABB, Endress + Hauser, Krohne, Knick, Pepperl + Fuchs, Samson and Vega.

Within the fieldbus segments Aventis has left typically 20% spare capacity to allow for production line expansion and further installation of instrumentation in the future.

Plant commissioning was performed directly in the DCS system, using an FDT/DTM (field device tool/device type manager) based integration tool.

Infraserv Hoechst Technik assisted the Aventis engineers in this commissioning task, and had to overcome several obstacles in incorporating all the different devices and different manufacturers involved.

These obstacles were not related to the Profibus fieldbus itself.

Overall the project confirmed the expectations with regard to faster commissioning and easier installation using fieldbus.

In particular the fieldbus barriers were identified as providing the major factor that enabled reduced wiring planning and installation costs, by allowing a number of devices to be included in each hazardous area fieldbus segment, using the FISCO concept.

Using this FISCO model also reduced the paperwork and documentation required to confirm intrinsic safety for the installation.

As a result of this project, Aventis/Infraserv presented this conclusion to the fieldbus working group at the 2004 NAMUR general assembly, confirming similar reports from DSM and Novartis.

Aventis and Infraserv Hoechst Technik will use this fieldbus technology for future projects at the Frankfurt location, and can confirm the acceptance of fieldbus technology in the chemical and pharmaceutical industry.

For the future Aventis are looking forward to the life cycle cost savings predicted, which will become apparent after some further operational experience on site.