Zetachem, a major supplier of specialty chemicals to a wide range of industries, chose the technologically advanced Adroit 32-bit open automation scada system to automate its significant manufacturing capability. The Adroit Version 4.2 monitors and controls a range of interlocks as well as providing progressive shutdown capabilities for the entire plant.
Based in Mobeni, Durban, the Zetachem plant covers approximately 22 000 m2 and has the capacity to produce in excess of 55 000 tons of chemical product per annum. Manufacturing facilities include a polymer plant with three special stainless steel eight-ton reactors, extensive blending capacity and 500 tons of storage capacity; a multipurpose monomer and surfactants plant comprising a stainless steel reactor and two sophisticated glass lined reactors which can be heated to 260°C, cooled, pressurised and placed under vacuum (these reactors are also equipped for reflux, distillation and handling of hazardous raw materials); a general reactions plant containing three 30 ton, four 6 ton and two 10 ton reactors; a powder blending plant using various sized ribbon blenders for bagging.
Richard Winter, of Zetachem Plant Operations comments, "Zetachem decided to introduce automation to the plant to run larger batch sizes and to avoid the costly and hazardous effects of human failure." A faulty batch of product in the polymerisation process, for example, can render scrap to the value of R200 000. Zetachem's ISO 9002 certification demands that their products meet exacting conformance standards at a high level of consistency and these were enhanced by the automation of the facility.
"Compared to other base systems, Adroit is one of the best of its kind, irrespective of price. Adroit's significant installations at the UK National Grid and the South African Navy convinced us that it was the best product for the job," continues Winter, who played a pivotal role in automating Zetachem's facilities.
The Mobeni plant produces and trades in an extensive range of synthetic organic and inorganic coagulants and flocculants to assist in the water treatment and separation process, including the dewatering of sludge and the clarification of wastewater. The company also manufactures safe chemical product for application in drinking water and supplies such major customers as Rand Water and Umgeni Water.
Zetachem, Mobeni supplies and manufactures a wide range of products for the pulp and paper industries to improve the retention of fibre and fillers giving better machine throughput and utilisation of water. The company's retention aid and trash scavenger programmes have played a significant role in the use of reduced quality pulps such as those used in recycling.
Arthur Bosman, member of the company Pro-Temp Automation, system's integrators for the Zetachem automation project, installed a P&F RPI with its I/O installed directly in the hazardous areas. This is believed to be the only one of its sort in the country.
The P&F I/O and IS Profibus PA instrumentation are on a Profibus PA network controlled by Moeller PLCs running in conjunction with Sucrosoft. The master PLC and I/O are located in a safe environment and receive analog readings from the underground tank control PLC which acts as a slave in the control and monitoring of sensitive manufacturing temperatures, pressures, pumps, valves and tank levels associated with the processes' flammable components.
Dewalt Bezuidenhout, Pro-Temp Automation programmer comments, "The system operates on Windows 2000 Professional and allows management to remotely control the batch process, provide an instruction list to the PLC and monitor inventory levels away from the hazardous environment."
Using the Adroit agent, audible alarming is used to warn plant operators of certain manufacturing conditions in an expedient manner. Short update times are required in the hazardous areas in order to control the exothermic reactions that take place there. The Adroit scada provides plant operators with dual monitor capability, providing a plant overview on one monitor and trends, such as those in off-loading and the bulk tanks, on the other.
The scada provides up to seven independent trend screens visually representing the reaction aspects of the plant's master control, levels-in, tanks, cooling aspects, water and more. Batch cycles take approximately 17 hours to complete, and the Adroit system's trending and historical data VCR capability allows plant operators to scroll back through the process and bookmark trends such as tank feeds. "Zetachem used the standard Adroit graphic package, which has very user-friendly functionality," comments Bruce Thompson, production director, Zetachem. The PC has a RAID system with two hard drives on which information is mirrored, providing back-up for data and trending information.
Thompson concludes, "The Adroit scada is scalable, growing as the Mobeni site does, and is proven to be reliable and totally up to our expectations. The Adroit scada packages will be installed in the Zetachem Hypochlorate plant and the Zetaresins plant in Johannesburg in the future."
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