Honeywell Specialty Chemicals has a large plant in Baton Rouge, La., and four smaller ones collocated in nearby Geismer, La. These plants produce refrigerants, hydrogen fluoride and Aclon, which is used in making impermeable plastics. The plants’ processes are mostly continuous. At the Baton Rouge plant, there are more than 2,500 control points in 250 loops; at Geismer, there are more than 5,000 control points in 500 loops.
Five years ago, when the facilities were AlliedSignal plants, there was no asset management system, says John McIlwain, a chemical and controls engineer who is information technology/process engineering control leader for Honeywell Chemicals’ Baton Rouge area. When a Geismer plant needed to boost production, engineers performed an evaluation of the 160 loops in that plant, using Honeywell Hi-Spec Solutions’ LoopScout. “The evaluation told us we had quite a few problems. A number of our flow loops—some of these were key loops feeding the main reactor—were performing poorly,” he recalls.
After the asset management software package was installed in 2001 in that plant, immediate and positive results accrued. “We increased production by more than $1 million per year. Since that time, we’ve installed LoopScout in the four other plants. The last one was completed in 2003. We have also documented annual savings of $5 million in one of the other plants, at which we increased the production rate by 10 percent, and $1 million at another plant, as well.”
The chemicals producer has put all of the Baton Rouge plant’s reporting software on one personal computer. “I’ve done the same thing at Geismer. I’ve used a Microsoft personal Web server. All someone has to do is open up MS Explorer and they’ve got the information on any plant,” McIlwain explains. Currently, 150 people have access at Baton Rouge and 200 at Geismer.
Initial success of the new asset management technology propelled the replacement of two older control systems, he notes. “Also, I’m hiring control engineers. This is directly related to the savings we’ve realized.” McIlwain says his company benefits from resolving basic control and instrumentation problems with the software, especially in finding incorrectly tuned loops. “You go out and put in appropriate tuning parameters and reduce the variability.
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