Benefiting from process automation

Automation technology is an important partner for chemical engineering, environmental protection and biotechnology.
Nowadays a holistic view of chemical plants entails not only dealing with equipment, piping systems and processes, but goes beyond classical measurement and control techniques to encompass a fully integrated approach to systems management. The pressure caused by increasing competition, environmental restraints and energy and raw materials costs has generated tremendous efforts in the chemical industry to operate production plants ever more efficiently. Besides eliminating bottlenecks in equipment and processes, this particularly involves using intelligent automation for plant optimization. For this reason it is only logical for automation technology to be given pride of place at Achema. To this end Namur, User Association of Process Control Technology in Chemical and Pharmaceutical Industries, has undertaken to support Achema. A cooperation contract between Dechema and Namur is a concrete token of this commitment. In future Namur will boost the automation side of Achema.

Production optimization of existing plants, also known as “plant optimization”,  can also, for example, result in increased yield, product quality, plant availability and plant reliability and/or in a reduction of energy and raw materials consumption, stock, personnel and capital expenditure. This in turn will bring about lower production costs, improved plant performance and, ultimately, higher profits. In view of the variety of different processes in terms of plant design, quality requirements and materials properties among other things, in individual cases it is necessary to determine what measures or instruments are required to solve a problem. Automation technology provides a broad spectrum of such instruments — with production planning, performance monitoring, process simulation, data mining, asset management, advanced process control and online process analysis to mention but a few.
Achema also means benefiting from automation technology.

-Dr. Norbert Kuschnerus-