Using PlantPAx, Prodesa Cuts 1,000 Hours of Engineering Time in the Development of a Wood Pellet Plant

Challenge

Recently, Prodesa faced a huge challenge. A US customer wanted to build a pellet plant capable of producing about 500,000 tons of pellets per year – five times greater than the typical size for these kind of facilities. This project, located in Greenwood, South Carolina, is set to become one of the biggest plant of its kind in the world.

The plant had to cover the whole pellet production process, which comprises the pre-treatment of the raw material, including debarking, chipping and wood re-chipping; storage, cleaning and dosing; thermal drying, milling, pelletizing, cooling and sieving; and, finally, product railcar loading to be exported to all over the world.

“In order to implement the equipment required to perform all the processes for this project, we called upon a range of recognized worldwide suppliers, from where we choose the most suitable component based on the specific requirements of the project. All this equipment was then connected in sequence in order to obtain the process results requested by the customer,” says Ismael Sanz. “One of the suppliers we selected was Rockwell Automation. Our customer, a highly recognized company, recommended Rockwell Automation, due to its long established presence in the US market and worldwide, the recognition of its quality and its solution’s high flexibility,” he adds.

Solution

The first thing Rockwell Automation did after seeing the size of the project was evaluate the most suitable architecture to assist Prodesa in the selection of the optimum components, including the deployment of an EtherNet/IP™ network. “From the beginning, Rockwell Automation led us in all project phases, allowing us to have a clear vision about all the solutions we needed to put into operation in one of the world’s biggest pellet production plant,” recalls Sanz. Prodesa chose to integrate the Rockwell Automation® PlantPAx® distributed control system, a solution that uses a common platform to integrate all critical process areas of the plant. In this way, it enables plant-wide control for process, discrete, power, information and safety using a single architecture, so disparate control systems are no longer necessary. This results in significant process optimization and a reduction of the total cost of ownership (TCO). It also offers a high scalability, real-time information availability from any part of the plant and safer connectivity based on a robust industrial security concept – covering plant-floor devices all the way up to the enterprise.

“In addition, connectivity between Operator Stations (OWS), Engineering Stations (EWS) and process controllers per the guidance from design tools and configuration guides made implementation very simple, easy to use and intuitive,” states Sanz. He adds: “The PlantPAx system leverages unmodified Ethernet and the safety features are integrated in the controller and distributed across the plant, which reduces cabling.”

The system uses predefined blocks – available from the “Rockwell Automation Library of Process Objects” – which contain a vast array of control modules commonly required for a process application, with an intuitive design that follows industrial standards. The library along with predefined control strategies greatly reduced development time and provided an efficient operating environment that helps you to obtain the optimum performance from the plant’s assets.

Another important aspect of the project architecture is the integration of the security application within the same controller using Allen-Bradley GuardLogix® safety controllers and SIL3 safety I/O.

Results

The use of Rockwell Automation PlantPAx distributed control system was beneficial for Prodesa in multiple aspects. First, it helped to save time during the project design. According to Ismael Sanz: “The use of this platform reduced the programming time by more than 60%, and the engineering process was reduced by 50% thanks to the use of the library objects developed by Rockwell Automation.” He adds: “Regarding the engineering development, we can state that cost reduction is the equivalent of one thousand working hours of our specialists.”

In addition, because the PlantPAx system is a configured solution, the use of an existing library reduces the need to review and test similar process sequences. According to Ismael Sanz: “This has allowed us to save more than 60% in simulation time, and due to the enormous dimensions of the plant, the installation and commissioning of more than 6,000 I/O points was much more straightforward.”

Furthermore, since Rockwell Automation components are connected through EtherNet/IP, they dramatically simplify the machine’s remote management and maintenance – reducing downtime, increasing productivity and optimising energy efficiency.

The benefits are not just limited to technological and performance aspects, but also in terms of staff training. Although the plant includes equipment and machines from different manufacturers, the PlantPAx distributed control system is the same for all of them, so the operators learn to operate only one solution. “We could say that, thanks to this platform, we reduced training costs by 25%,” says Sanz.

In conclusion, Ismael Sanz states: “Rockwell Automation has provided us with great support, proportional with the project’s magnitude. The use of Rockwell Automation products in the US market will help towards the final success of the project, due to their impressive reliability, worldwide availability and continuous support from this company. In a project of a size like this, to have a technology partner at this level has enabled us to reduce so much of our efforts, so we were able to focus on other aspects of the process.”

GuardLogix, PlantPAx, and Rockwell Automation are trademarks of Rockwell Automation, Inc.

EtherNet/IP is a trademark of ODVA, Inc.