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Degussa Plant Transitions its Legacy-Control System

09/22/2004

The Degussa peroxide plant in Morrinsville, New Zealand, has transitioned a key part of its legacy-control system application to Emerson Process Management's PlantWeb digital plant architecture (featuring the DeltaV digital automation system).

Until recently, the entire plant was operating under another vendor’s control system, which was installed in the 1990s. During the past several years, higher maintenance costs, availability of affordable support, and higher cost to keep the system current provided an impetus for implementing a change.

Besides cost-reduction factors, management at the Morrinsville plant wanted to gain the benefits of advanced digital technologies, such as multivariable predictive control embedded in the DeltaV system.

“Emerson’s DeltaV Predict was cost effective for multivariable model predictive control on our concentrator, enabling us to simultaneously reduce costs and improve quality,” says Arnold Yeoman, operations manager for Degussa.  “Emerson’s stepwise solutions for migrating to the DeltaV system provided us the opportunity to gain benefits from state-of-the-art digital technologies like predictive control to improve our bottom line.”