Intelligent Refining Uses PlantPAx™ Process Automation System

Leading sugar producer replaces legacy DCS with PLantPAx to obtain and integrate boiler control for vital operations

Background

Tereos France is a leading company in the French sugar industry with nine sugar factories, five distilleries and four packaging facilities, producing an annual total of 1.5 million tonnes of sugar and 500,000 cubic metres of alcohol and bioethanol from beet.

Each year the Tereos Boiry Sainte Rictrude sugar factory, located near Arras (in the region of Pas de Calais), produces 250,000 tonnes of white sugar for manufacturers in the agro-industrial sector (drinks, chocolate, jam, biscuit and dairy product manufacturers). This sugar is produced over a very short period, known as the “sugar campaign”, which runs from mid-September to December each year, during which time the sugar beet is harvested and transported to the sugar factory for processing.

Every day during the campaign, Boiry processes 20,000 tonnes of beet, produces 2,800 tonnes of sugar and consumes 15MW of electricity! The sugar factory produces this energy itself, by means of two boilers that supply a turbo-generator with steam. The factory is connected to the national electricity grid (EDF) only at start-up and outside the campaign period.

Challenge
  • Modernise and optimise control of the boilers and integrate these within a single control and command system for the whole factory

Solutions

Results
  • Boiler control has been improved, in particular in terms of monitoring reheating; it has been possible to link the boilers together, and power matching is now carried out automatically
  • Increased reliability of boiler operations
  • The boiler control and command system is now totally integrated with the other factory units, allowing tractability to be centralized for the entire production site.