Turnarounds are more and more time limited. But production and quality departments’ requests remain for calibration and certification. TEREOS and NESTLE, in North of France, worked with Emerson to find a solution. Job was done on their plant, thanks to a Flow Calibration Mobile Bench. Both companies saved money and time, eliminate risks, get flexibility in turnaround management and deliver expected certificates on time to their production and quality departments.
The site is located in the north of France in regions where sugar beets grow. The plant is a site where pilots are performed in search of innovations in the manufacturing process. 20,000 tons of beets are processed each day with sugar and alcohol produced. A distillation unit converts some of the sugar into alcohol.
One of the issues the plant experienced was in the distillation unit was variability in production levels. Another was in the quality parameters in the alcohol produced. Calibration of the flow measurement devices was a long process. The flow meters were taken out of the line, trucked to the supplier bench off site and then returned to the site for reinstallation.
The solution was to bring the calibration bench to the plant to do all the calibration on site. This provided more flexibility, calibration and less risk. The biggest benefit was the reduced time involved to give time for other turnaround activities.
The flow mobile bench supported calibration of several types of flowmeter technologies including Coriolis, vortex, magmeters and other. Water was used as the flow medium, which had a constant density to provides e flow and mass calibration.
As part of the solution, reports and certificates were provided including “as-found” and “as-left” calibration. As measurement were performed, decisions could be made to recalibrate or not if a meter was in range, but could be better. This type of flexibility was not possible with the old method of an external calibration bench.
They summed up the presentation noting the benefits of reduced delay and avoiding potential damage shipping flowmeters to and from the external calibration site. The operations staff had more flexibility. Bench performance and stability are very good. The certificates created are detailed, professional and met the needs of the plant. One lesson learned is that they would like to have an enlarged flow range.
The master meters were owned and provided as a service by Emerson as part of the mobile bench.
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