Emerson To Automate Lucite Chemical Plant In Singapore
Austin, TX - Emerson Process Management has been selected as the main instrumentation vendor for Lucite's methyl methacrylate (MMA) plant in Singapore, which is currently under construction and is scheduled to begin operation in 2008. MMA is a chemical used in consumer products including plastics, paints and adhesives.
"The Singapore MMA plant is crucial to Lucite's business strategy because it is the first plant to utilize our patented Alpha technology, which will liberate the MMA industry from its historical dependence on the pressured raw materials acetone, HCN and isobutylene," said John Noon, Lucite project engineer. "Alpha uses ethylene, methanol and carbon monoxide, which are all readily available and will not limit Alpha's unique scale potential."
Emerson will provide design verification, testing and commissioning, and will supply PlantWeb digital plant architecture asset management programs.
"The Singapore plant will be the first in a series of state-of-the-art, Alpha-based production facilities Lucite is building around the world," Noon added. "So it is critical that the quality of the instrumentation, equipment and services be best in class and easily scalable to higher capacity plants. We selected Emerson as our main instrumentation vendor because of its excellent performance as digital automation vendor at our MMA plant near Shanghai. Emerson's strong presence in Singapore and its strong global engineering capabilities also played a role in our decision."
"We are very pleased to be selected as the main instrumentation vendor for Lucite's ground-breaking Alpha plant in Singapore," said John Berra, president of Emerson Process Management. "Emerson engineers from the United Kingdom, India, and Singapore collaborated to provide a simple and modular design that can easily be scaled up for future plants without requiring major re-design and sizing work."
Emerson's PlantWeb digital plant architecture substantially reduces project costs, with customers typically reducing their installation costs by 30 percent. The architecture's built-in predictive intelligence can improve plant efficiencies by 2 percent or more, which is key to helping customers derive full value from state-of-the-art control, automation and asset management solutions, whether at the installation or operational phase of the project.
The PlantWeb architecture at the Singapore plant will include Emerson's safety instrumented systems, a plant information management system and a laboratory information management system.
SOURCE: Emerson Process Management