A polyamide plant automation

Siemens Controlmatic has been responsible for the complete automation of the new plant of polyamide Nurel has opened in Zaragoza. To this end, Siemens has opted for the concept of completely integrated automation and has opted for a totally decentralized system transmission and data capture.

View of the new plant of polyamide PA-6 in the factory of Nurel in Zaragoza

A new plant for continuous production of polyamide PA-6, has been built in the factory the company Nurel is in Zaragoza thermoplastic semicristalino industrial of white which is technically called policaprolactama and commercially nylon.
The polyamide PA-6 produced in Nurel is almost exclusively used for the manufacture of various synthetic fabrics. This new plant has two production lines each with a capacity of 23t/day of PA-6 chips.
There are also other units auxiliary and preparation of feed to the two main manufacturing lines and additives that are located in a separate building.
The plant has been built "turnkey" by Swiss Engineering EMS invents-Fischer and the implementation has been launched in April this year.
The automation of the process has been done by Siemens Controlmatic from Barcelona and transport lines by Elinar engineering and services company located in Zaragoza.
For the automation of this new plant the "Totally integrated automation" concept of Siemens Simatic PCS7 distributed Control system has been used as core of the configuration of global control of the new plant. The concept of automation of the process and the transport of material is reflected in the attached diagram (diagram 1).

In it we can see the hundred percent redundant design for process controllers and communications buses both seasons of operation. This plant has been used successfully the concept of field bus: using Profibus DP redundant for decentralised connection of Profibus PA and field I/o signals to connect the instrumentation process (pressure transmitters)(, flow, level and temperature) and Positioners to control valves pneumatic. There are also adjustable speed drives connected to the system of control over the bus DP. This procedure is optimized installation and interconnection of field devices acquisition of information cards are installed independently on the ground in areas close to the process itself and the transmitters of field operating with transmission of digital information technology are connected to the Control system via a cable of bus. There are some very critical control signals that require high-speed processing and response by the system of Control, whose acquisition is done via analog instruments cabled directly to inputs and analog signals. The system bus that interconnects the drivers of process with engineering and operation stations is the Fast Industrial Ethernet working to 100 MB and uses the technology of "switches" configured in redundancy which allows to filter and optimize communication between drivers and the seasons of operation. Two controllers of the type AS417 - 2 H with total redundancy power supply, CPU and communications processors are used for the control of the process. The transport system is controlled by another controller AS417 - 1 H. In the control room are ready for the control of the process four seasons of operation of which one is also engineering that centralizes all the elements of the control of the plant. The four available stations allow visualization and operation of the complete plant. Each of them has the same database from the application and performs the same functions of data storage, historical record of variables and reports of plant with which prevents the potential loss of data. The transport system is displayed and managed from an additional checkpoint. There are also two PLC control cutting machines supplied as a package and that they have connected to the Ethernet network to so easily view information from these teams from the stations of the control room.