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.
- Humidity & Process Temperature Control are of paramount importance in Explosives manufacturing.
- 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.