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Petrobras Zarate, a polystyrene manufacturing facility in Argentina boosts production by 3 to 5 per cent, and cuts its maintenance budget by10 to 12 per cent through a multi-year digital automation project.
Petrobras Zarate, a polystyrene manufacturing facility 80 kilometres north of Buenos Aires, Argentina produces high impact, general purpose crystal and bioriented sheet polystyrene. It is part of Petrobras Energia, an integrated energy company in Buenos Aires. Polystyrene is a lightweight plastic used to make items such as disposable food containers and cutlery, footwear, school materials, and parts used in refrigerators, air conditioners and vacuum cleaners.
The digital automation project modernised the plant’s high impact and crystal polystyrene facilities, including the water, steam and air utilities and the reactor operations. Through the modernisation, production rose by 3to 5 per cent -- to 66,000 tons per year. The plant’s availability isnow 99 per cent and product reliability is up by 2 to 3 per cent. 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 theneeds of the market,” said Roberto Gorbaran, instrumentation supervisor at Petrobras.”
Plant managers had several goals in mind whenthey decided to partner with Emerson for the technology upgrade. “Wediscussed 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 between2002 and 2005. Petrobras Zarate saved $1.13 million in 2005 when plant personnel 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 staffcan 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 lasttwo years we’ve been running 10 to 12 per cent 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 flowmetersand Fisher valves with digital valve controllers.
Advanced control tools increase production quality and capacity. For example, theapplication of neural network software in the DeltaV system made quality prediction in the reactors more effective, and Petrobras Zarate wasable 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 networkthat 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.
PlantWeb architecture is an open, standards-based digital automation solution that networks intelligent field devices, digital systems, and software to control processes and manage equipment and other assets. It delivers information for facilities management, including predictive alerts of pending malfunctions and guidance for corrective action to avoid production interruptions and shut downs.
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