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Availability improvements boost Argentinian polystyrene production
01 June 2006
Emerson Process Management has been able to increase production and reduce plant downtime at the Petrobras Zarate facility, a polystyrene manufacturing plant situated some 80 km north of Buenos Aires, Argentina.
A multi-year digital automation project has boosted production to 66,000 tons per year °V an increase of 3 to 5 per cent. The plant's availability is now 99 percent and product reliability is up by 2 to 3 percent.
Zarate produces high impact, general purpose crystal and bioriented sheet polystyrene and is part of Petrobras Energia, an integrated energy company in Buenos Aires. Polystyrene production at Petrobras Zarate had been limited by a 1980s-era distributed control system. ‘We needed modernisation to place the plant in the vanguard of technology and ensure it could respond to the needs of the market,’ said Roberto Gorbaran, instrumentation supervisor at Petrobras.
Plant managers had several goals in mind when they decided to partner with Emerson for the technology
upgrade. ‘We discussed a migration strategy towards a control system that could give us greater reliability, would fall within our budget, would comply with medium- and long-term strategy and satisfy management and the business,’ said Adolfo Suiffet, maintenance manager.
The transformation to digital was implemented in stages between 2002 and 2005. Petrobras Zarate saved $1.13 million in 2005 when, with Emerson's assistance and aided by its digital valve and instrument technology, plant personnel completed the final hot changeover of operations control to the DeltaV system without stopping production. Annual plant stoppages have been reduced by half, to once every two years, because plant staff can now make decisions based on more reliable data about their operations.
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