AUSTRALIA / PAINT: BlueScope Steel set up their first Colorbond paintline facility in 1966 at Port Kembla and, over the years, demand for its roofing, guttering, fences, sheds and warehouses has shown phenomenal growth. With demand pushing capacity limits in 2003, the company decided to locate a new plant at Erskine Park in Sydney, as the city’s western region had become the single biggest consumer of Colorbond products in Australia.

An internal feasibility group to determine capital expenditure was set up in 2004, comprising engineers each with at least ten years experience, at one of BlueScope’s paintline facilities at Acacia Ridge, Port Kembla and Western Port. This group knew first hand many of the problems that might be encountered during construction and commissioning of a greenfield paint plant and undertook a 12-month feasibility study, focusing on reducing these problems, for submission to the BlueScope Board.

The team took the bold and unusual step of reviewing process instrumentation suppliers during their conceptual stage, and they decided to future-proof their new plant by implementing PROFIBUS fieldbus technology throughout the project. “We wanted to do some front-end engineering before submissions. Thus, when approval came, there would be a greater degree of certainty around what the Board was approving,” explains Shannon Ballard, Project Engineer.
Interoperability, ease of engineering integration, troubleshooting and future scalability were all contributing factors in BlueScope’s selection of the technology.

Although the spend on instrumentation is relatively small compared with the overall project cost, the BlueScope team acknowledged that having accurate and reliable process data is critically important if the process plant is to function efficiently. The team had witnessed projects where instruments were chosen from a variety of vendors, and there was little vendor ownership regarding product selection, installation, commissioning and training. The team also knew that incorrectly selected instruments that are improperly installed have a negative flow-on effect through the whole plant life.

With this in mind, BlueScope shortlisted three vendors that it felt could be potential instrumentation partners. Leading European company Fata Hunter was appointed mechanical paintline equipment supplier to the project, sourcing their equipment from nine different countries. BlueScope provided them with their preferred instrumentation vendor list, but because Endress+Hauser had the broadest range of products, the highest level of PROFIBUS competence, and a worldwide presence, it won MIV (Main Instrument Vendor) status and supplied almost all the measuring devices for the project. The first Colorbond product was painted on 15 August 2007, approximately 20 months after construction started.

The plant comprises a paintline facility producing 120,000 tonnes per annum; a wastewater treatment plant; a regenerative thermal oxidizer, a significant rainwater capture and re-use system with total capacity in excess 800,000 litres, and cooling towers.

To eliminate all potential environmental risks emerging from the use of solvent-based paints, BlueScope implemented what is believed to be the world’s best practice in air emission control for this type of plant – a Regenerative Thermal Oxidizer (RTO). The plant runs at virtually zero gas emission because the RTO uses the thermal energy in the solvent – which is a fuel – to self-combust. This is recycled through a heat exchanger back into the ovens. “So once the system is heated up, we pull back on our gas systems and just use the solvents to fuel the ovens,” explains Ballard.

A range of Endress+Hauser instrumentation linked by PROFIBUS PA networks was used for the measurement and control processes. The instruments include: magnetic and vortex flow meters and flow switches; temperature switches, sensors, and thermocouples; Cerabar M and Deltabar S pressure and DP transmitters; Micropilot M radar and Levelflex M guided microwave level products; analytical products including pH and conductivity sensors, and all the devices are linked by PROFIBUS PA technology to the plant’s automation system - supplied by Rockwell - via a Prosoft interface.

PROFIBUS technology has provided BlueScope with the data needed to make better management decisions over the long-term, and provide flexibility for future expansion.
The BlueScope team is currently reviewing Endress+Hauser’s Fieldcare and partnering it with W@M – the Web based Asset Management tool. If implemented, this will allow BlueScope to diagnose the health of, and monitor the performance of, their process instruments 24/7, as well as make all the manuals, certificates, spare parts lists available online. ENDRESS+HAUSER AUSTRALIA or info@au.endress.com

Top

NETHERLANDS / MARINE: eL-Tec Elektrotechnologie, in Hattem in the Netherlands, is building an alarm system for a luxurious sailing yacht, the 52 meter ‘Boreas’. The company has a lot of experience in control and monitoring systems for ships but up to now has used separate control and service systems. For this ship, a more powerful and extensive system was needed, so the engineering team explored new possibilities. The answer lay with S-MAX, a powerful Phoenix Contact PLC with an integrated touch-screen service panel (HMI) and a PROFINET interface.

Four S-MAX controllers are deployed in the ‘Boreas’. Using PROFINET these exchange data transparently with equipment such as the motor management and fire alarm systems. PROFINET is certified for shipping and handles the data transported between the PLC and the I/O modules and the normal Ethernet data simultaneously in real-time. The system has the required reaction speed and supports very fast visualization. With the HMI integrated into S-MAX costs and programming hours are much reduced.

The monitoring system controls all vital functions of the ship – the motor, the valves in the bilge pump, fuel and ballast tanks, fresh water tanks, the heating and cooling installations, fire alarms, battery system, the navigation lights and the deck lights.

The simplest, and the most complicated, systems are handled with PROFINET IO, from the dimming of the lights in the accommodation area to the hydraulic system for reefing and hoisting the sails. Everything is done with a strong emphasis on energy saving. An important reason for choosing PROFINET was the savings realized in cabling. The whole system communicates via one PROFINET fiber network, which delivers a big commercial advantage together with considerable weight savings – important in ship design.

The ship is divided into six segments, each with its own managed PROFINET switch which connects to the I/O devices around the ship. A separate glass fiber cable has been installed which will only be used for this system, and the whole network is tightly secured against interference.

The yacht will sail around the world, so eL-Tec has proposed that a fully redundant system be installed. The primary system would then have a back up, which PROFINET supports easily. If the customer agrees, eL-Tec will also implement the software needed to let its support engineers in Hassen help the crew remotely solve any problems that arise via the internet. PHOENIX CONTACT

Top

BRAZIL / OIL TERMINAL: In partnership with the company Automind – Automação Industrial Ltda., ALTUS is supplying PROFIBUS remote systems from the Ponto Series to roll out a telecommand system for valves with electric actuators at the floating REMAN pier in Manaus.
Three docks are being installed for loading the tanker ships taking oil and gas from the Arará hub in Urucu to the foreign and Northern/Northeastern domestic markets. In all, the system has approximately 60 valves, divided among three PROFIBUS networks.

The remote systems will be supplied with classified area Ex-d. protection and tropicalized electronic boards. The distribution of the remote systems will be allocated in accordance with the valve placements. Each will be used to control the opening torque of the valves from 0-100%, in maintenance mode and automatic remote operation, as well as diagnostic functions. The entire valve sequencing and alignment will be done with an iFix SCADA, to be interconnected to the remote system using an Ethernet TCP/IP network.

Owing to the difficult placement of the fixtures and electric ducts on the floating pier and the need to increase network availability, the remote system will have two PROFIBUS DP-V1 masters, operating in parallel.

In performance tests the communication network reached transmission rates of 12 Mbits, which generated an update of 120 operands close to 240 bytes per master in 0.48ms per housekeeping.

The application led to improvements in operations by way of better asset management using predictive maintenance. The resources for predictive and remote parameterization maintenance offered by PROFIBUS DP were fundamental to the implementation of the system. ALTUS or weiser@altus.com.br

Visit www.us.profibus.com
the home of PROFIBUS and PROFINET in North America