Eka Chemicals saves up to 20% on plant maintenance

Reduced plant shutdowns, increased production and product quality, as well as operational and maintenance savings are being reported by resins producer Eka Chemicals, part of Akzo Nobel in Maastricht. The firm says the improvements are significant, and that they come partly as a result of new automation systems, but partly also from Emerson Process Management’s PlantWeb digital plant architecture. What’s interesting here is that Eka has gone some way to quantifying its savings, offering broad brush figures, rather than simply the usual anecdotal evidence, convincing though that often is. “We have reduced our maintenance costs by 10-20 percent,” says Peter Montforts of Eka, “by utilising the remote diagnostic and calibration capabilities of [our] field instrumentation, coupled with the AMS [asset management system]. “During a recent process problem, the DeltaV [plant automation] system was interrogated, and two control valves were identified as being at the root of a problem. AMS predictive maintenance software was used to recalibrate the valves, which solved the problem. Previously it would have taken a considerable time to identify and rectify this type of fault.” Emerson’s PlantWeb system installed includes a DeltaV system, its AMS software with communications via digital plant fieldbuses using Foundation and AS-i Open standards to a range of Emerson actuators, controllers and transmitters. “Since the installation of PlantWeb, unplanned shutdowns have been reduced by 10%,” continues Montforts. That’s been achieved by closer automatic process monitoring. “Our levels of control have improved significantly, and we now have improved batch consistency and an increase in production levels.”