Plaxica selects Siemens PCS 7 for biopolymer pilot plant 22 January 2014

Process engineering specialist Plaxica, which designs production systems for the stereocomplex PLA (polylactic acid) biopolymer, has built a scalable pilot plant to showcase its Optipure technology.

Located at The Wilton Centre, Teesside, the pilot plant uses a small-scale DCS (distributed control system) based on Siemens Industry Simatic PCS 7 technology and implemented by QSI.

"As a relatively young company, it is imperative we are able to demonstrate that our process designs are exactly what [customers] are seeking," comments Andy Langton, senior process engineer at Plaxica.

"While it is possible to do this to some extent at a laboratory level, we wanted to move to having a DCS-based pilot process plant that could accurately portray the robustness of our technology in an industrially relevant context," he adds.

Langton says that the DCS was a key part of the equation, enabling the firm to achieve enhanced data collection to gather process intelligence and hence further develop its process technology.

"For example, we can now look at trends and how our processes react to change. The DCS pilot plant with PCS 7 at its heart gives us this capability."

Langton says that with Siemens and system integrator QSI behind the development, it has engineered "a cost-effective and commercially scalable pilot plant" that not only allows for process technology testing and development, but also proof of concept with potential users.

"Through the DCS approach, we were able to use standard PCS 7 library functionality and thereby reduce the timescales required for the bespoke pilot process plant Plaxica was seeking," states Steve Watson, engineering director at QSI Group.

"The high level of diagnostics, good alarm management and easily and quickly configurable points for archiving, reduce both the overall cost and risk for Plaxica," he adds.

Brian Tinham

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