“We had a positive experience with Honeywell employees and technology. Honeywell has a great team of people who provided us with the experience and information we needed. With this project we saved time and costs, and eliminated wiring concerns, all of which were important to us.”
Phil DeSpirito, Project Manager, Roche
Roche needed to replace its 20-year-old co-generation (co-gen) turbines and boiler controls to increase process availability and energy efficiency. In addition, Roche wanted to integrate the various control systems within the co-gen and steam plant to enable efficient operations and maintenance. Roche implemented Honeywell solutions to upgrade the technology at its New Jersey plant and depended on Honeywell services to complete the project in time to avoid peak electric charges. Benefits of upgrading the technology include:
After investigating several options, Roche decided to migrate from several different systems and controllers to Experion using Honeywell’s project services. The project included the co-gen re-powering and the conversion of four power boilers to Experion. Controls for both parts of the project had to optimize steam and electricity production while minimizing downtime.
The first requirement of the project was to replace older GE co-gen turbines due to high maintenance costs and poor availability. The second part of the project included replacing the boiler controls. Roche also wanted to integrate all systems in into one consolidated control system using Experion with a long-range plan to eventually integrate all control systems at the New Jersey facility into one platform.
Several factors influenced Roche’s selection of Honeywell for this project:
By using the zero footprint migration kits, no major rewiring or loop checking is required, resulting in significant time and cost savings
The project plan was to utilize the Experion Server-TPS to communicate with TDC 3000, allowing a seamless integration to Experion and exposing operators to the Experion software. Existing boiler controls were migrated one by one to the Experion controls. The co-gen turbines were then integrated into the Experion system. The steam plant was tuned using both boilers and co-gen for optimal operation. The project began in November 2003 with system development, followed by site installations and operator training. In June 2004, two new co-gen turbines started up. Systems were checked in August and September and by November 2004, the steam masters and boiler controls were retuned.
Teamwork was key to the success of this project. Roche engineering, IT and project management staff worked with Honeywell sales support, project management and system engineering teams in New Jersey and Georgia. “Honeywell has a great team of people who provided us with the experience and information we needed,” said Phil DeSpirito, Project Manager, Roche. “With this project we saved time and costs, and eliminated wiring concerns, all of which were important to us.”
The project included gathering data from multiple systems that were installed over the last 20 years. Roche realized that the documentation did not accurately represent the control schemes developed over the last 20 years. Honeywell extracted the necessary data and collaborated with Roche on the system specifications for hardware, software and graphics. Honeywell configured and programmed the software and hardware, and designed the I/O interfaces and cabinets.
Future plans for the New Jersey site include integrating Experion and EBI across the plant and moving all controllers and systems to one dedicated network. “Honeywell is part of the master plan for this facility,” said DeSpirito. “More Experion installations are in progress.”
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