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Turck power conditioners and multibarriers ensure plant operation at the Frankfurt-Hoechst Basell plant. In order to take over the production of another site at short notice, Basell Polyolefine GmbH was able fit out its Frankfurt-Hoechst... |
Plant in three months and install the Foundation fieldbus system. Central elements of the new installation are the Turck power conditioners and multibarriers which offered more impressive features than just their channel-specific galvanic isolation.
The production installations for polyethylene at the Hoechst Industrial Park have been running in Frankfurt for more than 50 years. What started under the management of Hoechst AG is now run by Basell Polyolefine GmbH...
...For Harald Liebisch, team leader for automation at Basell in Frankfurt, an exciting phase started in December 2005 when the polymerisation plant had to be converted in record time: “Once the first decisions regarding the new installation were made by the end of the year, everything started very quickly”, Liebisch summarises. “We were able to bring the plant up to the current state-of-theart within three months and equip it with Foundation fieldbus (FF) lines.”
Liebisch had already gained his first experiences with multibarriers, although these were not satisfactory in all aspects. When the Turck solution was presented the decision was made very quickly: “We were immediately impressed by the full galvanic isolation of the Turck multibarriers,” the automation manager explained, “it was exactly this feature that was missing before.”
The Turck multibarrier MBD-49-T415/Ex allows the installation of Ex-i drop lines up to 120m in length. The full galvanic isolation is provided both between the trunk line and the output circuits
as well as between the four output circuits. This prevents compensation currents due to potential differences. The integrated short-circuit protection comes into action in the event of a shortcircuit at a fieldbus node. Only the output concerned is disconnected – the trunk line and the other outputs of the affected fieldbus segment remain in operation.
The actual planning could be completed just as quickly as the decision process thanks to the configuration tool that Turck had developed for this purpose. “We used the tool to make a preliminary plan of the segments. The length of the fieldbus lines, the division of the fieldbus barriers and the assignment of inputs to multibarriers – the configuration tool allowed us to define all these points very quickly,” Liebisch explained.
Now nine fieldbus lines are in operation at the Basell polymerisation plant. Power conditioners connected upstream of each one are provided for supplying the fieldbus segments. The further expansion of the FF network to 15 segments is planned within the scope of this project. “We are very happy with the Turck products,” Harald Liebisch says. “In addition to the galvanic isolation, their reliability and simple handling are outstanding. Since we have completely changed to Turck, we do not have any more difficulties. We therefore also intend to implement the next expansion stage with Turck products.”...
Author:
Markus Haller
is Key-Account Manager in PA Chemie Team
at Hans Turck GmbH & Co. KG, Muelheim an der Ruhr.
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