PROCESS AUTOMATION
We provided a system integration solution for a polymer production plant (having 20+ batch reactors), which produces various polymers of 100+ recipes.
The key factors for successful automation of the multi-recipes polymer production process are:
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Precise and fully-automated weighing of the raw materials
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Precise control for the reaction temperature, feeding rates, etc.
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Sequence control for the automatic operation and control of the plant
To meet these requirements, we conducted,
Instruments Design
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Integrating thousands of sensor and actuators into PLC and HMI through RS485 and Ethernet communications
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Designing a redundancy system for safety
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Optimizing communications with PLC, sensors, and actuators. About 3,000 I/O points can be processed within 1 sec.
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Software skills to overcome hardware limitations (low resolution, stiction, hysteresis, high cost)
Designing and implementation of operation and control logics (through PROMONICON)
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Feedback/feedfoward controllers for accurate/precise control of the reactor temperature, the feeding rates of monomers/catalysts
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Sequence control to realize the complex operations and controls
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HMI for easy monitoring, operation, data storage, etc
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Automatic importing 100+ recipes and fully-automated weighing
Design PLC logics for safety and high-speed data processing
Results
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Almost 100% automatic operation with high-performance control to manipulate 100+ recipes, which is not possible with manual operation
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Mass production with operating 20+ reactors (10 ton capacity) simultaneously by only two operators in the control room
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Producing 100+ types of polymer products with the automatic weighing system, followed by the automated polymer reactor system
