Emerald Kalama Chemical's Netherlands Plant Undergoes DCS 'Great Migration'

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Researched by Industrial Info Resources (Sugar Land, Texas)--Emerald Kalama Chemical LLC's plant in Rotterdam, Netherlands, is undergoing a "great migration" as its obsolete distributed control system (DCS) is replaced with a new one.

"The Great Migration Project" by Emerald Kalama (part of Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio-based Emerald Performance Materials, LLC) and engineering and software company Yokogawa Electric Corporation (Tokyo, Japan) began in March and will continue through the year, according to Istec International (Lisse, The Netherlands), which is providing a key tool in the process. Emerald Kalama produces benzoic acid, benzaldehyde, benzyl alcohol, sodium and potassium benzoate and specialty derivatives such as hexyl cinnamic aldehyde, linear aldehydes and performance additives.

Industrial Info is tracking three active Emerald Kalama projects worth $49.63 million, including a new 100,000 metric tonne-per-year benzoic acid unit in Rotterdam.

Yokogawa, which was awarded the DCS and safety project by Emerald Kalama, is providing the new CENTUM VP DCS for the Rotterdam operation. In order to minimize expensive production downtime, the migration needed to take place during online process conditions. Therefore, Emerald required a so-called hot cutover for the migration project, according to Istec, which is involved in the project with the IST-203 Hot Cutover Tool. The tool is designed to support online DCS migrations by taking over active control loops during the migration. A total of 1,750 input/outputs (I/O's) will be migrated with the support of the hot cutover tool.

"For some I/O's an online migration can be problematic because of their critical nature to the process," according to Istec. "Disconnecting these critical control loops can result in unstable process conditions." The hot cutover tool can take over these critical loops while maintaining optimal control of the process, Istec says.

"So far, the project proceeds flawless and at the end of 2016 it is expected to be finished," Istec said. "Emerald wants to minimize production downtime and loss of income as well as a DCS migration progress without any flaws."

Frank Knobbe, account manager for Yokogawa, was quoted by the company as saying, "Many customers facing a migration project initially start with the idea to move on with a "like for like" approach. However, there is a clear tendency in today's market to focus more on increasing productivity, operational efficiency, human reliability, safety as well as reduction of emissions and energy consumption. A migration project offers the unique momentum to reconsider the migration strategy related to these topics.

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