Displaying items by tag: Process control

Canada: Lafarge Canada has selected ABB to update the process control system at its Bath cement plant in Kingston, Ontario. ABB will supply, commission and support its ABB Ability System 800xA distributed control system, which aims to enhance plant process visibility and control. The Bath plant produces over 1Mt/yr of OneCem low-carbon cement and is the site of a pilot carbon capture project.

Andrew Stewart, vice president of cement at Lafarge Canada, said "We are dedicated to advancing sustainable construction, not least through rigorous decarbonisation efforts. From working with ABB to upgrade our process control system, to integrating low-carbon fuels and upgrading to energy-efficient kiln technology, we are significantly leading the way in sustainable construction by reducing our carbon emissions per tonne of cement produced. For example, our pilot carbon capture initiative with Hyperion has also been critical, as it leverages innovative processes to capture and sequester CO₂, bringing us closer to our goal of net-zero emissions."

Germany: Switzerland-based ABB has acquired analytics equipment supplier Födisch Gruppe. ABB says that the acquisition will enhance its offering of continuous emission monitoring systems and expand its technology and innovation competitiveness.

Stephan Schumann, CEO of Födisch Group’s parent company Dr. Födisch Umweltmesstechnik, said “This acquisition is a testimony of our strong performance in recent years. Leveraging ABB’s global footprint will allow to scale the impact of our offering internationally.”

ABB’s Measurement and Analytics President Jacques Mulbert said “We are very impressed by what the Födisch Gruppe has achieved and are eager to welcome their team to the ABB family. Integrating the Födisch Gruppe into ABB will unlock significant opportunities for new and existing customers.”

UK: FLSmidth Cement has entered a cooperation with Carbon Re, a UK-based climate tech company, to integrate FLSmidth Cement’s process control software, PXP, with Carbon Re’s AI-powered cloud platform. This integration will provide cement producers with access to new process optimisation capabilities.

Japan: Tokuyama Corporation has installed ABB’s Expert Optimizer automated optimisation system in the kiln line of its Nanyo cement plant. The system controls the line’s calciner, kiln and cooler processes. The supplier says that the technology will reduce the Nanyo cement plant’s thermal energy consumption by 3%.

Tokuyama Corporation "We selected ABB's Expert Optimizer to equalise operations and improve operational efficiency. As expected, we have significantly reduced the number of the operator manual operations normally spent on manual tasks.” It added “We believe that this solution will also support our young operators in learning the know-how of our operations efficiently."

Germany: Siemens has obtained a cybersecurity certification from TÜV SÜD, a German inspection and certification organisation, for an automation system based on IEC 62443-4-1 and IEC 62443-3-3. As part of the certification TÜV SÜD tested and verified the security functions implemented in the Simatic PCS 7 process control system, a system that controls and monitors continuous manufacturing processes, such as those in cement plants. With this certificate, the company has documented its security approach to automation products showing integrators and operators some of its industrial security measures.

Simatic PCS 7 provides functions for industrial security including segmentation into zones and security cells, the security of access points and user authentication, secure communication, patch management, system hardening, virus scanners and whitelisting. The security measures and functions for Simatic PCS 7 contribute toward safeguarding plant operation and avoiding plant downtime and outage times.

Denmark: FLSmidth has released ECS/ProcessExpert 8.3, the latest version of its process control system. Following installation and testing at four sites, it is now available for different cement and mineral plant applications, including as a free commercial release to all existing ECS/ProcessExpert version eight customers. The update improves a number of features and benefits including easier transitions for cement recipes.

"Some of the advanced techniques used by the new system include model predictive control and fuzzy logic rules. These allow it to continuously monitor the plant's process and quality parameters and continuously compute new control set points with more speed and accuracy than a human operator," said FLSmidth's Global Product Line Manager for Process Optimisation, King Becerra.

Other benefits offered by the update include a full decision tree on the front page of the system to help operators understand controller actions better and enhanced full plots on the front page to allow operators to see actuator actions and measure responses to a given action from the main page.