Asahi selects DCS system for new UK polymer plant
15 Dec 2006
The grassroots 1000 tonnes/year ETFE facility near Blackpool is to complement production of a range of thermoplastic copolymers made at the company’s Hillhouse plant. AGCCE already employs a Yokogawa DCS system at the Thornton plant, which manufactures PTFE resins, dispersions and lubricant powders.
Engineering design, project and construction management firm K Home International Ltd awarded Yokogawa UK Ltd the contract to install and commission its integrated Centum CS3000 DCS and ProSafe RS safety systems. These will be integrated with an existing Centum CS3000 DCS to form another section of a plant-wide control system, Yokogawa said.
The contract also covers the use of Yokogawa HART-enabled measurement and control instrumentation and Plant Asset Management system (PRM), which uses 'smart' instrument communications via HART and Fieldbus to enable remote and automated maintenance functions.
Using HART, PRM can acquire device information, various parameters, and self-diagnostics information, in addition to measured data. This information can be used for administration and supervision of field devices, and for remote automated inspections.
Yokogawa will also install the Exaquantum plant information management system on this project to provide process reports, manufacturing trends and key performance indicators for the manufacturing process.
The UK project, which is due to come on stream in 2007, is part of an Asahi Glass Co. programme to double its ETFE production capacity. The company is also investing around Yen 2.5 billion to increase capacity of its Kashima plant in Japan from the first quarter of 2008.
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,” according to Martin Ward, managing director of Yokogawa UK, in a 14 Dec company statement.
Asahi’s Fluon ETFE is tailored to offer ease of moulding, high chemical and UV resistance and high electrical insulation properties . The Japanese group claims to supply over half the world’s demand for ETFE, which isand is mainly used as covering materials for wires and cables and as a film raw material.