Remote Monitoring of Ammonium Nitrate Plant Facilities.

About Customer

  • One of the leading Ammonium Nitrate manufacturers in Asia, producing 500,000 MT per year at three manufacturing plants geographically spread across.
    • By virtue of higher personal safety concerns, onsite personnel is to be minimized.
    • In the past, experienced few near-miss accidents due to inadequate monitoring & controls.
    • The facility is of old school control systems & automation.
    • The process is highly demanding in terms of narrow operational windows in terms of :
      • Humidity Control.
      • pH and Temperature Control.
      • Dust & Particulate Control.

Objective of Remote monitoring is to:

  • Provide Realtime monitoring, timely alerts, and process insights.
  • Minimize deviations in process parameters to reduce process hazards.
  • Optimize utility systems to meet the demands of multi-products batch operations with varying production throughputs.
  • Optimize fuel and energy consumptions process equipment.

"Prognostic & Diagnostic monitoring has helped the facility to bring down near-miss incidents, improve safety records and energy consumption."

Solution:

Plant Systems Monitored Remotely.

  • Process Unit HVAC systems.
  • Boiler & Steam Systems.
  • Cooling Water System.
  • Dust Control in Coating, Loading & Bagging.

Improved Humidity controls with online monitoring.

Benefits:

  • Breakthrough benefits in terms of safety & energy improvements are:
    • Humidity & Process Temperature Control are of paramount importance in Explosives manufacturing.
      • Humidity variations reduced from 60+ 15% to 60+ 5% variations.
      • Process Temperature variability reduced from 110oC+ 15oC to 110oC + 5oC.
    • Power Optimizations to the tune of 500,000 USD per year across:
      • Cooling tower Fan & Pump running hours rationalizations.
      • Fabric Filter system Airflow & Cleaning frequency optimizations.
      • Boiler Management Controls (BMC) optimizations.
  • Visualization of current operating values in both text and graphic form to ensures there is a comprehensive overview of processing assets.

Reduction in power usage with online monitoring.