Emerson Automates World's Largest Smart Pulp Mill

Emerson Process Management has helped Chile’s Celulosa Arauco strengthen its pulp supply capability by digitally integrating the world's largest "smart" pulping mill. Digital automation allows mill personnel to readily access more data, allowing for easier calibration and greater mill-wide visibility, efficiency, and management.

"We automated the whole plant from the moment we feed the logs into the chipper until a bale of pulp emerges at the end," said Alejandro Erazo, Distributed Control Systems Project Engineer for Arauco.

"Our objective was to use the most modern technology in the market and use it in the best way possible, to make each part of the project easier, from engineering to configuration to start-up of the plant."

Celulosa Arauco is one of the world's largest forestry companies measured by plantation area and production of Kraft wood pulp and sawn timber and wood panels. The pulp mill construction project represents an approximate US$850 million capital investment, with the plant designed to turn out 856,000 tons of Kraft pulp a year.

Saving time

The PlantWeb solution integrates 3300 FOUNDATION fieldbus devices including Rosemount flow, level, pressure and temperature instruments, and Fisher valves with Fisher FIELDVUE digital valve controllers. Predictive diagnostics information is collected from intelligent devices throughout the mill by AMS Suite which delivers alarms and data to operations and maintenance personnel.

Also controlled are more than 2100 Rockwell E3 and E3+ motor control centers (MCCs) through DeviceNet, more than 3500 discrete remote I/O points and more than 340 variable speed drives though Profibus DP. The PlantWeb solution also connects with more than 15 PLCs through Profibus DP and special analyzers through Modbus.

“The calibration time of each instrument was reduced by one-third and configuring motor control centers for 30 motors now takes half a day or so rather than two weeks to a month as was the case without intelligent motor controls.

“Valve configuration time has also been substantially reduced. On previous projects we typically spent half a day trying to move the valve to the chosen setpoint. Today all we have to do is push a button and it self-calibrates," noted Erazo.