Success story
August 2009
PLCs, DCSs & Controllers
Indo Gulf Fertilizers turns to Honeywell for process automation and emergency shutdown solutions.
Indo Gulf Fertilizer of India decided to upgrade and revamp the ammonia and urea sections of a fertiliser plant to the latest control system technology available.
Indo Gulf manufactures and markets urea, a nitrogenous fertiliser. The company has been able to sustain its leadership position through its unrelenting focus on adding value to farmers as a total solution provider, helping them to improve their yields at a lower cost. Originally operating the ammonia and urea sections of its plant with third party single and multiloop controllers, Indo Gulf decided to upgrade its control in line with a commitment to the principles of Six Sigma in agriculture related applications.
The challenge
The automation was introduced so that all operations could run in auto with a safe, proper and sequential shutdown system in case of emergency, thereby protecting the plant.
Additionally:
* This was a revamp of the old system of third party controllers, which posed problems in design and engineering with regards to matching the locations of new panels within the present control room layout.
* The job was required to be performed during short duration shutdowns with major tasks such as removing 400 existing cables and tagging them for termination in 40 new DCS panels needing to be done.
* Work in the plant could not be disrupted and had to go on round the clock. This meant that meticulous resource planning had to be done before and during shutdown activities.
* Seamless integration of all existing third party devices along with Honeywell’s safety system into a single Experion Process Knowledge (PKS) control system was required.
* Design, detailing, manufacture and supply of a large system of more than 40 panels had to be achieved within four months.
The solution
The solution supplied by Honeywell consisted of the following major sub-systems:
* Experion PKS C300-based redundant controllers and data acquisition system. Experion provided a seamless third party interface solution, powerful HMI graphic tool with scripting facility, alarm management, historian facility and more.
* State-of-the-art, TUV approved (TUV SIL3) Safety Manager-based emergency shutdown system for the ammonia section.
* Mosaic-based hardwired panels for ESD operation.
* HART management system.
* Operator interface sub-systems for urea and ammonia including peripherals like printers.
* State-of-the-art redundant network hardware with raid 5 servers along with the latest switches.
The benefits
The scope of the project included the design, engineering, supply, installation, testing and commissioning of the complete DCS system for both the ammonia and urea plants, as well as the emergency shutdown system for the ammonia plant. After implementation Indo Gulf realised the following benefits:
* Increased efficiency: connectivity of two control rooms (ammonia and urea) ensured that operations can be done from either.
* Improved operator performance through an enhanced HMI.
* Improved process performance through more effective logging of events and generation of alarms.
* Better system diagnostics.
* Better report generation for business optimisation.
* Greater operational convenience through integration.
For more information contact Debbie Rae, Honeywell Southern Africa, +27 (0)11 695 8000, [email protected], www.honeywell.co.za
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