Giant fertiliser plant installs safety control system

06 July 2010

Yara Brunsbüttel GmbH, a Yara International ASA company specialising in the production of ammonia and urea for the fertiliser industry, says it has installed the HIMax safety controller as part of its emergency shutdown (ESD) system for the Brunsbüttel factory's desulfurisation system.

Source: Yara Brunsbüttel GmbH

Yara International ASA is the world's leading producer and supplier of mineral fertilisers. The Industrial division distributes technical gases and nitrate products that result as by-products during the manufacturing of mineral fertiliser.

The HIMax safety system, from HIMA Paul Hildebrandt GmbH + Co KG, consists of the central unit, 150 digital input channels, 20 analogue input and 50 digital output channels. The redundant structure of the CPU and some of the I/Os ensure the highest possible availability for the plant. Yara Brunsbüttel GmbH says it was impressed with the overall high performance of HIMax.

Developed for mid-size and large applications, HIMax is claimed to be the first safety system to “enable uninterrupted system operation throughout a plant's entire life cycle.”

It is based on HIMA’s Nonstop XMR technology, which combines SIL 3 safety technology with a fault-tolerant architecture that is said to eliminate spurious trips. It also allows unlimited changes, modifications, extensions, improvements and proof tests during system operation.

The HIMax system was integrated into the Yokogawa CS 3000 distributed control system. The Modbus RTU protocol is used for communication with the control system.

HIMA’s SILworX® integration tool was used to engineer the HIMax safety system. The IEC-61131-3 tool ensures configuration, programming and diagnosis.

HIMA Paul Hildebrandt GmbH + Co KG says it introduced the world’s first TÜV-certified safety system in 1970 and since that time has installed more than 25,000 HIMA systems worldwide.

Further Information about HIMA can be found online at www.hima.com.