SUPCON

Hubei Xingfa Chemicals Group Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as “Xingfa Group”) is a listed company mainly engaged in developing, producing and selling phosphorus-based chemicals and fine chemical products. After more than 20 years of development, it has become one of the largest companies in the phosphates specialty industry in China.

Xingfa Group's organic silicon new material integrated recycling project in Inner Mongolia is a vital project of the group(hereinafter referred to as “the project”), of which, the 150,000 t/a ionic membrane caustic soda unit mainly provides liquid caustic soda, chlorine and hydrochloric acid required for the production of glyphosate and organic silicon plants, and is also the first caustic soda plant in China to use glyphosate byproduct industrial salt as raw material.

Challenge

However, Xingfa faces many challenges in Inner Mongolia in the process of development. “Due to its location in the northwest of China, labor cost is one of the most prominent challenges. The cost of employment is high, and it is also very difficult to attract talent. Relevant silent assets fail to be utilized, and data silos occur," said Li Yonggang, the chief engineer of Xingfa Group. In addition, as the company continues to raise the bar on unit-intensive and integration requirements, digital construction has become the key to tackling these difficulties.

Goal

Li Yonggang introduced that the 150,000 t/a ionic membrane caustic soda unit of the organic silicon new material integrated recycling project is supported by the SUPCON i-OMC system and aims to build a highly automated and intelligent plant to promote the fully automatic operation and “Gray Screen” operation of the units. It helps to achieve intelligent and autonomous operation and build a“Fully-automatic Plant” with automatic inspection, operation and recording.

Solution

The SUPCON i-OMC system can deeply integrate intelligent algorithms, expert experience and process mechanism knowledge, and fully apply the self-developed key technologies of control loop auto-tuning, predictive control, operation pilot and alarm management, so as to comprehensively improve the auto-control rate, stability rate and safety of the units, greatly reduce the operation frequency and realizes the unit's autonomous and collaborative operation throughout the production process. The goal is to achieve operation with less duplicated manual work and eventually, fully-automatic operation while ensuring stable product quality, increasing product yield and reducing energy and material consumption.

Effects & Results

The project has enabled highly automated and intelligent operation & management of the project through modular procedure automation, loop auto-tuning, alarm management, batch control and other intelligent and autonomous operation:

lDuring low-load production, the plant’s gray screen operation time can reach up to 33 hours

lThe personnel quota has been reduced from an industry average of 120 people to less than 40 people

lIt helps the plant reduce the duplicated manual work by 67%, decrease the alarm frequency by 90%, and realize automation and one-click startup & shutdown throughout the process

lIn terms of asset appreciation, the comprehensive utilization rate of data has exceeded 80%

lThe CCR monitoring has been upgraded from 500 I/Os per operator to 1,500 I/Os

All industry indicators have reached the internationally advanced and domestic leading level.

Overall, the successful creation of Xingfa Group's organic silicon new material integrated recycling project in Inner Mongolia has not only established a safe, environmentally friendly, stable and refined production & operation control system, providing a sample for the construction of an independently operated intelligent plant but also brought considerable economic benefits to the enterprise.

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