HIMA selected by Lanxess AG for ESD system upgrades

HIMA (Brühl, Germany and Houston, Tex.), a designer and manufacturer of safety automation solutions, has been selected by Lanxess AG (Leverkusen, Germany) to upgrade an existing ESD (emergency shut-down) system in its hexane oxidation plant located at the Krefeld-Uerdingen Chemical Park, in the North Rhine-Westphalia region of Germany. Lanxess selected HIMA’s HIQuad H51, a safety product specifically tailored towards safety-critical applications that require high levels of process availability.
 
Lanxess, a specialist chemical manufacturer, uses the Krefeld-Uerdingen Chemical plant to make KA oil, which is used in the production of thermoplastics. KA oil is a mixture of cyclohexanone and cyclohexanol, and is produced by the oxidation of cyclohexane. Since the production process poses high environmental risks, the ESD system plays a major role in deactivating the reaction in the event of danger by monitoring limit values and control valves.
 
HIMA’s safety system was first installed in the Krefeld-Uerdingen Chemical Park in 1999 and has been operating fault-free ever since. The system upgrade involves adding two new module racks and I/Os (input/outputs), extending the communication with the process control system and incorporating of new central modules with larger memories.  The ELOP II engineering tool was upgraded using the Ethernet protocol to connect to the engineering PC. The link with the Siemens control system is a simple and efficient Profibus-DP.
 
Before commissioning the project, LANXESS decided to conduct a Factory Acceptance Test (FAT) using the expanded and modernized safety system by HIMA. Together with HIMA’s project team in Brühl, the entire system was replicated and all the functions were tested in collaboration with LANXESS and TÜV Süd Chemieservice. This enabled the commissioning time to be reduced significantly.