Shin-Etsu Chemicals to upgrade with Experion PKS

Japan-based Shin-Etsu Chemicals announced March 6 that it will use Honeywell's Experion PKS to begin a plant wide re-instrumentation of its vinyl chloride (VC) plant in the Netherlands. Shin Etsu acquired the 550,000 tons-per-year VC plant in late 1999 from Akzo Nobel N.V. and Shell Chemicals.

By Staff March 1, 2003

Phoenix, AZ – Japan-based Shin-Etsu Chemicals announced March 6 that it will use Honeywell’s Experion PKS to begin a plant wide re-instrumentation of its vinyl chloride (VC) plant in the Netherlands. Shin Etsu acquired the 550,000 tons-per-year VC plant in late 1999 from Akzo Nobel N.V. and Shell Chemicals. Originally constructed in the 1950s, the VC plant uses a mixture of controls from pneumatics to Honeywell’s TPS distributed control system. The first phase of Shin-Etsu’s re-instrumentation project is being coordinated with a plant capacity increase project that adds a fourth process furnace. Akzo Nobel, consultant and senior project engineer for the re-instrumentation project explains, ‘Phase one consists of installing approximately 110 FOUNDATION fieldbus devices and 50 traditional 4-20 mA safety and analyzer devices to Experion PKS C200 controllers for the new furnace.’