January, 2001

Superior Controls engineers are providing support and guidance to bring a major Southeast Asian propylene manufacturing facility on line. The Kuantan, Malaysia-based, facility will produce 300,000 metric tons/year of propylene, the raw product for polypropylene plastic, for the Southeast Asian market.

Ten operator-interface stations enable the operators to easily monitor and control 4000-plus sensors and control devices throughout the facility. A Yokogawa CS-3000 DCS, (Distributed Control System), directly controls approximately 3000 I/O points while two separate sets of Allen-Bradley PLCs in a hot back-up configuration control and monitor most of the remaining I/O points. Finally, a Triconex controller with triple redundancy controls the safety ESD System.

The redundant PLC systems control and monitor the instrumentation associated with the cold separation unit. This unit condenses the propylene product with the reactor effluent and blends hydrogen with the fresh liquid reactor feed before vaporizing it and feeding it back to the reactor. The PLC system communicates with the Yokogawa DCS via Modbus. All field wiring is through intrinsic safety barriers.

Peter Schmidt, engineering manager at Superior Controls, was responsible for the electrical, instrumentation, and control design and implementation as well as project management for the PLC portion of the project. Said Peter wearily, after his 26 hour flight back from Kuantan, Malaysia, to Boston, Massachusetts, "I would prefer that our next major control system be implemented right here in New England."