Chemical plant upgrades emergency shutdown system
07 June 2010
Hima-Sella is to upgrade the Emergency Shutdown System (ESD) at GrowHow UK’s Teesside Billingham plant to a TÜV certified HIQuad H51qHS system.

Chemical plant upgrades emergency shutdown system
GrowHow UK is the UK's premier fertiliser manufacturer and a major supplier to the process chemicals industry. Its extensive Billingham chemical plant produces and stores ammonia, nitric acid and ammonium nitrate and at the heart of the Teesside chemical cluster, is ideally placed for distribution in the UK and for export.
Hima-Sella supplied the existing ESD in the 90s, a TÜV certified Hima Planar F rack mounted solid state fail safe logic system installed behind a large operator wall mimic in the Weak Nitric Acid (WNA) 4 control room. The system operated very well for many years with little maintenance being required but the programmable upgrade provides extensive diagnostic and Sequence of Event (SOE) reporting facilities and dedicated communications to the Distributed Control System (DCS).
During extensive technical consultations with GrowHow UK’s engineers, the TÜV certified HIQuad H51qHS system which can meet SIL3 requirements, was selected as a suitable replacement for the hardwired system. With dual CPUs and single failsafe I/O configured in this case to meet SIL 2, it will be mounted in the same cabinet space and use existing terminations in the adjacent marshalling panel. The PLC will have dual Ethernet communications allowing vital diagnostic information to be transferred to the distributed control system (DCS), to operator Human Machine Interface (HMI) level.
A separate, standalone PC with Wizcon Logline will provide independent sequence of events recording (SOE) allowing operators and managers to see the chain of events for any given situation. This vital diagnostic tool allows operators to quickly and confidently assess plant issues and resolve them to ensure continuous, safe plant operation.
Hima-Sella managing director Ian Wright commented: "Hima-Sella prides itself on being able to adapt solutions to customers’ needs quickly and cost effectively and this latest award is a demonstration of that in practice. Hima-Sella’s highly skilled engineers are producing solutions for virtually all process and safety needs required in the market place.
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