Eaton allows to reduce a downtime of production and number of emergency situations at the BASF plant

The Eaton company installed the innovation communications system of SmartWire-DT with the time cut-out of protection of the PKE engine at the Lemförde plant of BASF company in Germany. After updating of the transport loading system started 25 years ago thanks to SmartWire-DT there was an opportunity to take readings from each electric motor and to provide interrelation with Eaton engine circuit breakers. It allowed to organize preventive maintenance and to reduce quantity of emergency situations. In case of short circuit the mentioned engines can be deactivated in the managed mode before the protective switch works.

The Lemförde plant works at the market of polyurethane products in Europe. A key part of production is the transport loading system of giving of barrels with raw materials or finished goods which provides effective interaction between production workshops and warehouse. Now separate distributors and drives of a system are connected to control block not separately, and is consecutive using a uniform 8-pole flat cable. Thanks to the solution Eaton all connected devices at the same time are provided with energy and a possibility of data transmission.

Complexity of the project was that during this process in total 50 three-phase electric motors had to save operability of a route of giving of barrels and five vertical loading devices. The communications system of SmartWire-DT from Eaton became the most appropriate solution of a task. As a result, thanks to upgrade of a system, the plant already avoided several emergency calls of electricians at night and on the weekend. Moreover, in case of an overload a system returns to work much more quickly.

In the course of upgrade of the BASF plant it was succeeded to separate its territory into different safety zones. Earlier when clicking the button of an abnormal stop all system was disconnected, and restart was possible only at its confirmation from the central console. For optimization of this process safety zones were also created. The chain power supplies which are located on one in each zone give current to all components of the SmartWire-DT system. And at emergence of fault only that zone where there was an accident is disconnected. Restart is performed from the corresponding control panel on site.

Also one of the unique products installed in a system as protection of the engine is the time cut-out with the digital PKE releaser. This switch does not work in case of an electrooverload, only the switching contactor is disconnected. Earlier for reset of the switch actions of the electrician were required that led to a stop of a pipeline system if the specialist was not available. It considerably facilitates work of specialists and also increases efficiency of production process.