Alcoa is the world’s leading producer and manager of primary aluminium, fabricated aluminium and alumina facilities, and is active in all major aspects of the industry. The company serves the aerospace, automotive, packaging, building, transportation and industrial markets; bringing design, engineering, production and other capabilities to customers.
To achieve significant enhancements in alumina production and raw material efficiencies across its refining business, Alcoa turned to Honeywell to provide standardised process control infrastructure and control solutions across multiple refineries in six countries. The partnership resulted in a strategic programme known as quality automation solutions in alumina refining (QUASAR). By improving Alcoa’s plant efficiency, reducing raw materials consumption and lowering environmental emissions, QUASAR provides Alcoa with a sustainable competitive advantage.
Key features of the QUASAR programme include:
* Improved process performance by leveraging automation technology and combining best practices from each refinery.
* Improved plant support through centralised monitoring of the system.
* Reduced downtime with integrated support and maintenance practices through a co-operated support centre.
* Rapid deployment at each location by a dedicated implementation team that minimised costs and improved quality.
* Funding of the program via a lease rather than capital expenditure.
Challenge
Controlling production in an alumina refinery is a complex task requiring the processing of large volumes of bauxite, caustic soda, lime and other raw materials by large plants to digest the alumina minerals from the bauxite, separate the remaining waste material, re-crystallise and then calcine the hydrate to produce the alumina product.
As a world leader in alumina production, Alcoa wanted to take this production process one step further by installing a common process control system and advanced process control applications across its global refineries. This would be supported around the clock by remote monitoring from Phoenix and two support centres in Houston and Perth.
“In order to accomplish this we needed to partner with someone that had the process control product and solutions expertise but also understood the cross-cultural challenges of seven different sites, multiple countries and cultures, and four different languages,” said Dennis Mason, process systems manager, Alcoa.
Solution
Alcoa not only found a partner in Honeywell but also a company that would take ownership and help develop the QUASAR programme. Six years later, the common platform has been successfully established and the shared benefits realised.
“Working with Honeywell under the QUASAR programme, the benefits we expected to see were improved alumina production rates, reductions in our raw materials consumption and increased technology transfer between our refineries,” added Mason. “We have consistently exceeded expectations in those areas.”
QUASAR’s results are in part attributable to sound engineering practices. No production losses, no time lost injuries, no budget overruns and an aggregate customer satisfaction score of 4+ out of 5 meant that this programme team met the stringent standards of both Alcoa and Honeywell.
One of the particular challenges faced by QUASAR was ensuring Alcoa’s IT security policies could be maintained while still allowing data access from the process control network and access for the global support teams. The companies jointly developed a sophisticated network management model that included:
* Virtual private networking to protect the network from the outside world.
* Firewalls between the commercial network and the process control network to prevent intrusion to and from the commercial domain.
* Trust settings on the process control network to ensure correct authentication of users.
* Access protocols enabling Honeywell to remotely monitor equipment on the process control network and direct site staff to implement changes.
The value to Alcoa has been significant. While improvements in alumina production, raw materials usage and environmental emissions have an immediate impact on the bottom line, the ability to integrate reliable process information with the business has enabled the company to take a major step towards establishing global best practice benchmarks in process control.
For more information contact Debbie Rae, Honeywell Southern Africa, +27 (0)11 695 8000, debbie.rae@honeywell.com, www.honeywell.co.za
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