Evonik Degussa chooses wireless system for UK site

Congleton, UK -  Evonik Degussa Seal Sands is installing a new intrinsically safe wireless network to improve its operational efficiency. The WLAN is to extend the chemical company's assessment of overall equipment effectiveness (OEE) into the extreme environments and zone 1 hazardous areas at its Seal Sands site in the UK.

The WLAN will help plant operatives to input the OEE data in many locations on the reactor floors of four production buildings.  It will be used in conjunction with a software package, which has been developed by Evonik Degussa Seal Sands'  to allow operators to log faults and other critical information relating to the production equipment.

Engineers at Evonik Degussa Seal Sands had initially intended to install several fixed LAN ethernet connection points. However the cost of installing this type of LAN infrastructure in a zone 1 hazardous area and the future scalability made this option unfeasible.

Instead, the engineers opted for Meru-powered iWAP101 802.11a/b/g WLAN Access Points from Extronics. These are centrally managed and controlled using a single-channel architecture and offer a robust and stable WLAN for heavy metal environments. With a WLAN installed, portable PC terminals and PDA¹s with barcode scanners or RFID readers can be used to gather data or active WiFi RFID tags can be used to track assets and people.

"In a multi-purpose, multi-product batch plant such as ours, being able to measure and improve the overall effectiveness of our equipment is vital," said Chris Steel, continuous improvement manager at Evonik Degussa Seal Sands. "However, rather than just spending time measuring our OEE we are now able to involve our people and concentrate our efforts on improving specific areas identified by the analysis tool, thanks to the Extronics equipment."