While troubleshooting the air pollution control equipment at a global Fortune 500 automotive manufacturing company, we discovered that the PLC and HMI hardware in each of their four (4) Regenerative Thermal Oxidizers (RTOs) was so outdated that the equipment would soon no longer be supported by the manufacturer. Additionally, the performance of the PLCs & HMIs was causing various operational inefficiencies, resulting in unplanned downtime and maintenance difficulties.
We provided a robust turnkey solution, including all design and electrical engineering (using existing operating sequence and input from customer’s process engineering & operational staff), PLC & HMI components, demo/installation & commissioning, and on-site training to ensure operators were quickly up to speed.
Along with the hardware upgrades, we developed new programs to solve for specific inefficiencies and other reported issues of concern. Our program allowed the system to better respond to increases and decreases in volumetric flow due to changing process loading or sudden loss of overall capacity in cases where one of the other RTOs went into an alarm state. It was also designed to automatically remove a system from service prior to a low-temperature condition occurring, avoiding an environmental event.
Other benefits included:
We accomplished most tasks prior to being on-site for final installation. For example, we saved hours of troubleshooting in the field by using PLC simulation software to test our logic in a virtual, real-time environment, before performing onsite commissioning. We also helped them avoid costly downtime by upgrading one RTO at a time, leaving the other 3 RTO’s in a “production-ready” state.
The customer reported major improvements in operational efficiencies and streamlined troubleshooting as discussed in more detail above.
