Control and safety contract signed

The integrated control and safeguarding system will become an integral part of the existing Centum CS3000 DCS to form another section of a plant-wide control system.

Yokogawa UK has been awarded a contract by K Home International to supply, install and commission integrated Centum CS3000 distributed control and ProSafe RS safety systems for a new ETFE process plant at the AGC Chemicals Europe (AGCCE) manufacturing plant at Thornton Cleveleys, near Blackpool, Lancashire.

AGCCE is one of the world's leading producers of fluorochemicals and fluoropolymer materials, and the Thornton plant manufactures PTFE resins, dispersions and lubricant powders.

In a major extension to the AGCCE plant, an additional process plant is to be constructed to add to the manufacturing diversity at AGCCE.

The new plant, a "grass roots" project to be built on a brownfield site, will manufacture 1000 tonnes of ETFE per year.

The manufacture of this fluorocarbon-based polymer will complement the range of thermoplastic copolymers made by AGCCE at its Hillhouse plant.

The integrated control and safeguarding system will become an integral part of the existing Centum CS3000 DCS to form another section of a plant-wide control system.

This additional system will increase the effectiveness of process operations to move another step towards achieving operational excellence while reducing operational expenditure.

In addition, the use of Yokogawa HART-enabled measurement and control instrumentation with Yokogawa's plant asset management system (PRM) will streamline maintenance operations, further reducing operational expenditure.

Yokogawa's PRM uses "smart" instrument communications (via HART and Fieldbus) to enable remote and automated maintenance functions.

Using the advantages of HART, PRM acquires device information, various parameters, and self-diagnostics information, in addition to measured data.

This wealth of information will be used for administration and supervision of field devices, and for remote automated inspections.

PRM transforms the style of maintenance from manual work, mainly done on site, into IT-based automated device management.

On-line diagnostics showing equipment status will report directly to operations and maintenance technicians via the DCS operator and maintenance display screens.

Yokogawa will also install the Exaquantum plant information management system (PIMS) on this project to provide process reports, manufacturing trends and key performance indicators for the manufacturing process.

Exaquantum PIMS resides on the Yokogawa DCS network with direct access to all process data across the entire plant-wide network, thus enabling a total view across all AGCCE manufacturing processes.

The original PTFE plant control system supplied by Yokogawa was based on a Centum CS1000 distributed control system.

This system has proved its worth by not only streamlining existing production but also allowing AGF to extend the control system to add additional process plants to form a plant-wide control system.

"Yokogawa was chosen to provide the control system for this new process plant largely because of the trouble-free operation of the existing Centum DCS on the PTFE plant", comments Martin Ward, Managing Director of Yokogawa UK.

"This capability will be reinforced by the Centum CS3000 system, which achieves 'seven nines' (99.99999) reliability".

"This system expansion and the incorporation of smart instruments demonstrates Yokogawa's commitment to supporting and strengthening existing DCS installations, underpinning AGCCE's strategy of condition-based maintenance", he added.

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