Petrobras adds Emerson automation at polymer plant

London - The Petrobras Zarate polystyrene plant 80km north of Buenos Aires is achieving production gains and reduced plant downtime through a multi-year digital automation project with Emerson Process Management. The project has increased production by 3 to 5% - to 66,000 tonnes per year -  plant availability to 99% and product reliability by 2 to 3%.

Polystyrene production at Petrobras Zarate had been limited by a 1980’s-era distributed control system. “We needed modernisation to place the plant at the forefront of technology and ensure it could respond to the needs of the market,” said Roberto Gorbaran, instrumentation supervisor at Petrobras.

Plant managers had several goalsfor the technology upgrade. “We discussed a migration strategy towards a control system that could give us greater reliability, would fall within our budget, would comply with medium- and long-term strategy and satisfy management and the business,” said Adolfo Suiffet, maintenance manager at Petrobras Zarate.

The transformation to digital was implemented in stages between 2002 and 2005. Petrobras Zarate saved $1.13 million in 2005 when plant engineers completed the final hot cutover of operations control to the DeltaV system without stopping production. Annual plant stoppages have been reduced by half, to once every two years, because plant staff can now make decisions based on more reliable data about their operations.

“Thanks to being able to intervene at the right moment, with the right diagnosis, maintenance costs have been cut. In the last two years we’ve been running 10 to 12% under budget,” said Suiffet.

The Petrobras Zarate plant uses FOUNDATION fieldbus communications to network Emerson’s DeltaV digital systems, Rosemount flow, level and temperature instruments, Micro Motion® Coriolis flowmeters and Fisher valves with Fisher FIELDVUE digital valve controllers.

Advanced control tools increase production quality and capacity. For example, the application of neural network software in the DeltaV system made quality prediction in the reactors more effective, and Petrobras Zarate was able to up rates for certain products in the plant. Predictive diagnostics from AMS Suite: Intelligent Device Manager deliver information to operations and maintenance personnel for fast decisions on field devices.

The plant has also added mobility enabled by a wireless network that allows them to perform asset maintenance in the field since personnel can use their laptops to access operational and diagnostic data through remote DeltaV desktop and AMS Suite applications.