Emerson, Millennium finish batch plant automation upgrade

Austin, TX—Millennium Chemicals (Jacksonville, FL) recently completed its first batch automation project under an exclusive worldwide agreement with Emerson Process Man-agement.

By Control Engineering Staff February 18, 2003

Austin, TX— Millennium Chemicals Emerson Process Man-agement .

Steve Sarnecki, Millennium’s global director of process control, says that, “Transformation of the batch controls in the intermediate chemical production unit was the first step in a multi-year automation strategy to take advantage of a new global technology and commercial alliance between Millennium and Emerson Process Management, and it’s having a very positive effect on productivity and profitability.”

Millennium’s alliance with Emerson replaced traditional competitive bidding activities with Emerson instead providing up-front design engineering support, thus permitting Millennium to begin implementation and reach productivity improvements sooner.

Maurice Wilkins, director of process automation for Millennium’s specialty chemicals business, says selection of the DeltaV system, a core component of Emerson’s PlantWeb digital plant architecture, is significant because ‘it moves us away from an entirely manual operation to a technologically advanced, fully-compliant ANSI/ISA S88 automated batch solution. We found the DeltaV system to be easy to engineer, configure, and learn for both engineers and operators. DeltaV’s single database has been an enormous help in eliminat-ing problems formerly caused by multiple databases. Also, DeltaV’s small footprint has been a benefit in our limited space. Although we moved very quickly on this first project, the commissioning and startup procedures have gone well. Going forward, we plan to use the DeltaV system exclusively in this division of Millennium Chemicals.’

Millennium reports that it is a major international chemicals company, with leading market positions in a broad range of commodity, industrial, performance and specialty chemicals, including TiO2 and titanium tetrachloride.

Control Engineering Daily News DeskDave Harrold, senior editordharrold@reedbusiness.com