Profibus PA on the biggest sugar and alcohol mill

The Maracai Mill has chosen Profibus PA devices for the most significant plant in the world sugar and alcohol industry using Profibus: Smar provided all PA instrumentation, design and commissioning

The Maracai Mill in Brazil has chosen Smar Profibus PA devices for the most significant plant in the world sugar and alcohol industry using Profibus.

During 2004 Maracai started up a full automation solution using Profibus and ASi technologies to get performance improvements in alcohol and sugar production.

For this project Maracai bought Profibus PA instrumentation from Smar.

Smar is a leader in the Americas market and provided the PA instrumentation, design and commissioning services.

The main points in the selection of Profibus technology for the project were: the acceptance and reliability of this protocol, ease of installation, simplicity of configuration and easy of safety maintenance.

These factors were studied by GANA (Automation Group of Nova America) before definition of the project.

The project was designed on Profibus and ASi technologies with people from Maracai Mill: Smar, was the system integration company working on the PA side.

The system solution is based on a GEFanuc PLC, series 9030.

All transmitters and valve positioners (in total 116 field devices) are from Smar and are connected to the PA bus using the Smar JM1 junction box.

The field devices used are: LD303 (Pressure, level and flow transmitters), TT303 (Temperature transmitter), IF303 (4-20mA to Profibus PA converter), FI303 (Profibus PA to 4-20mA converter) and one of the most important field device in the Sugar and Alcohol segment, which was the Smar DT303 Density/Concentration transmitter.

The DT303 is the worlds most accurate 2 wire density transmitter suitable for use in pipes and tanks.

It is responsible for online density measurement of the alcohol output processes and in the fermentation processes, removing the need for lab samples to be taken.

The DT303 provides online measurement of density, concentration, Brix, INPM, Percentage of solids, etc, and allows easy calibration in situ.

All PA configurations were made using Simatic PDM from Siemens.

The maximum length in the DP network is 450m.

PA networks were on average 250m in length but there is one segment of 400m.

One IM157 and one DP/PA coupler compose each PA network with 3 Intrinsically safe barriers from Smar (DF47) and 7 field devices per barrier.

In summary 116 PA devices from Smar and 132 valves (ASi products from Sense, P+F and Murr) composed the project.

An interesting point in this project is the use of intrinsic safety barriers which is not common in this segment.

According to Maracai automation the most important points were the implementation time, reduction of physical space, and simplicity of training and startup.

Up to now Maracai have observed the following benefits with the new system.

* Benefits in configuration and maintenance of the PA network.

* Easy data acquisition and installation of PA devices.

* Fast problem identification due to advanced diagnostics and system tools.

Fabiano Andre Lourenco - Instrumentation Supervisor and Paulo Roberto Vidal - Automation Leader, both from Maracai Sugar and Alcohol Mill made the following statement: "According to the work by GANA to analyse the protocols in the market, the Profibus PA network was the best option for our PLC platform.

With all the system changes we were anxious about the new technology but we had confidence in the reliability and operability of Profibus.

We knew that with support from Smar the startup and the operation would be excellent.

Now we are working with our new system and technology in one of the most important plants in the sugar and alcohol world and are pleased with the results".

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