Process Control Against the Drought: Automating the World's Largest Desalination

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Plant Pax operator workstations (OWS) provide a fully customised way to communicate with selected process areas and allow direct access to each controller’s data points. This approach within a desalination plant system delivers many advantages. First, it streamlines the work of the controllers due to the lack of duplicate settings, allowing high working speeds; second it can considerably reduce errors; and finally it can help to increase reliability and safety at the facility.

“After a lengthy review process, we chose the process control solution of Rockwell Automation, with its emphasis on a central process control system, which is at the forefront of technology,” explains Jacky Ben Yaish, Engineering Manager IDE Technologies.

Looking Ahead

The Sorek desalination plant began working at full capacity in October 2013, providing 624,000 m³ of water per day (with preparations for future expansion). The facility immediately set new performance benchmarks for output and costs as a result of its use of advanced membrane desalination technology. Additionally, with the Plant Pax system, SDL was able to reduce engineering and infrastructure investment costs, reduce energy consumption and increase productivity. SDL also took significant steps to reduce the environmental impact both on the land and in the sea.

“Thanks to the scalable Plant Pax control system from Rockwell Automation, and Contel’s involvement in both the planning and implementation stages, we were able to implement the project successfully, without deviation from the budget. The process control system was built using modular object libraries, and was developed with the vision of future needs and upcoming projects of IDE Technologies,” Jackie Ben Yaish concludes.

* * The author is Solution Architect for Process Automation at Rockwell Automation, Düsseldorf/Germany

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