FINAL CASE STUDY Design of Automatic Control System for CCM Chemicals (M) Sdn Bhd The Scenario

Now that you have experience as a process engineer, you have decided to join a process control consultancy firm, PARAGON Consulting Sdn. Bhd.. You are hired because of your knowledge in chemical engineering, experience as a process engineer, and credentials. Since many of the firms engineers are electrical and mechanical engineers, your job scope includes: i) provide expertise to other engineers to understand, describe and analyze chemical processes, and ii) design automatic control systems for chemical processes. One Tuesday morning, you received the following email from the general manager:

To: Design Team <design.team@paragon.my> From: Abu Bakar Iman (abi@paragon.my> Date: 29/03/2011 11:00AM Subject: Design of automatic control system for CCM Chemicals Good day engineers, I had a meeting with CCM Chemicals plant manager last week. They are now having problems with the existing control systems of their chlorine gas absorption processes. To be specific, they are facing difficulty to maintain the process variables at the desired operating conditions. Plus, they are experiencing inconsistencies in the online measurement of the product specs too. There are two chlorine gas absorption columns operating, as part of Chloralkali Process for chlorine production, in the company. At the moment, CCM Chemicals is urgently looking for a prospective consultancy firm to solve these problems. Due to our excellent track record in the previous consultancy projects, theyve invited us to bid for this project. Therefore, I want your team to design/modify the automatic control systems for the chlorine gas absorption plants that can handle those problems. Make sure that you state concrete justifications if in any case you want to revamp the existing control systems or maintain the existing ones. As this is only a preliminary control system design, you dont have to include details on instrumentation, budget, or any other design particulars. As usual, you need to use established techniques for determining and designing control systems. Please ensure that you use the accepted selection guidelines for the proper selection of variables. Use the control design form to make your work more systematic. You should be able to justify whatever that you want to do. Evaluate if you should include more advanced control systems, such as feedforward, cascade, ratio, split-range and others if there is a need to do so. Enclosed are the process description and simplified PFD of the process plants thats all we got from CCM Chemicals. The information that we have right now is definitely not enough and there might be some errors. Therefore, they are willing to give you and your team a tour to the plant, at Pasir Gudang, next week. This is to help you understand the process better. But before you go, I want to see a detailed list of information that you need to find out from CCM Chemicals. Besides, I also want you to carry out a process review on chlorine absorption process (as part of chlor-alkali process) so that you have a picture about the process before you go to the plant. Guys, do this well! Youre representing our companys excellent reputation out there. Make sure you come up with a good proposal of the control system design and win the project. All the best! Best Regards, Abu Bakar Iman General Manager, PARAGON Consulting Sdn. Bhd. Page | 1

CHLORINE GAS ABSORPTION PROCESSES

CCM Chemicals Sdn Bhd Pasir Gudang, Johor

CCM Chemicals is the leading chlor-alkali producer in Malaysia, a position which CCM Chemicals has made its priority to maintain. In Pasir Gudang, CCM Chemicals currently operates two MS ISO 9100 (2000) accredited chlor-alkali plants with the production capacity of 200,000 MT per annum. It is primarily to produce chlorine that is very hazardous to transport, and the caustic soda is the by-product. Chlorine is produced by the electrolysis of brine in the chlor-alkali manufacturing process. Since the chlor-alkali process consists of brine treatment, brine electrolysis, cooling, drying, compression, liquefaction and filling, there is a high volume of chlorine emission from each sub-sections of the manufacturing process. To comply with the international Safety, Health and Environment (SHE) regulations and the product quality specifications, CCM Chemicals chlor-alkali manufacturing plant is designed with chlorine gas absorption processes as safety procedures and emergency measures in handling the release of chlorine gas and other toxic substances from the manufacturing plant. To prevent chlorine emission to the environment, caustic soda, which is one of the by-products in the chlor-alkali process, is used to scrub the excess chlorine to form sodium hypochlorite in a very fast exothermic reaction according to the following chemisorption equation: Cl2 + 2NaOH NaCl + NaOCl + H2O

There are two chlorine gas absorption plants available at CCM Chemicals: Primary Chlorine Gas Absorber and Emergency Chlorine Gas Absorber, which both are equipped with chlorine gas absorber blower to suck up the inlet chlorine gas.

Primary Chlorine Gas Absorber Primary chlorine gas absorption process (Figure 1) is an absorption system to absorb the excess chlorine from the sub-sections of chlor-alkali process, for instance, electrolysis plant, brine dechlorination, etc. The absorption column is equipped with chlorine gas absorber blower, hypo tank (1), primary absorber pump and primary absorber cooler. In this plant, caustic soda is also recycled through the absorber and the hypo tank (1) by primary absorber pumps. During the plant operation, the small amount of chlorine gas released from the chlor-alkali process is absorbed into the caustic soda solution to produce sodium hypochlorite. The concentration of sodium hypochlorite in this plant is monitored by oxidation reduction potential (ORP) analyzer. Once the required concentration is achieved, the product is sent to sodium hypochlorite storage facility. Primary Chlorine Gas Absorber has no head tank. Therefore, the excess chlorine that cannot be absorbed through this column is passed to the Emergency Chlorine Gas Absorber. Emergency Chlorine Gas Absorber Emergency chlorine gas absorption process (Figure 2) is an absorption system to control the chlorine released on the occurrence of plant trip. In normal operation, no chlorine is passed to the process. High concentration of caustic soda solution is used as scrubbing agent to cater large amount of gas chlorine during plant trip. The absorption column is equipped with chlorine gas absorber blower, hypo tank (2), caustic deluge tank, emergency absorber cooler and emergency absorber pump. Residual chlorine that cannot be absorbed through this column is accumulated inside a head tank before it is recycled to the main stream of chlorine gas. Hypo tank (2) is used to hold sodium hypochlorite that is produced when chlorine gas is chemically scrubbed into the caustic soda solution. To maintain the liquid level inside the hypo tank (2) at 50% from the total tank capacity, recycle caustic soda solution is continuously filled into the hypo tank (2). Deluged caustic soda is recycled between Cl2 gas absorber and hypo tank (2) by emergency absorber pumps. Temperature of inlet stream into the absorption tower is controlled by emergency absorber cooler.

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Chlorine Gas To T-730 Hypo From P-744 Hypo To D-870

TT

WR

E-713 Primary Absorber Cooler

Chlorine Gas From Header

PI ORP

A-722 Hypo Tank Agitator

ORP

FT

Chlorine Gas From SP-501 Chlorine Gas From T-280 Chlorine Gas From SP-260

LI

LT PI PI

Hypo From D-740

T-710 Primary Cl2 Gas Absorber

D-720 Hypo Tank (1)

P-724A

P-724B

Primary Absorber Pumps

CCM Chemicals (M) Sdn Bhd PLO 411, Jalan Perak Satu, 81700 Pasir Gudang, Johor, MALAYSIA.

Process Flow Diagram (PFD): Primary Chlorine Gas Absorption Process Drawing No.: Scale: NTS Drawn: Checked: Date: March 29, 2011

Figure 1. Primary Chlorine Gas Absorption Process Page | 3

MS-730 D-750
NA

Caustic Deluge Tank

LT

FT TT

AF-730

E-733
Chlorine Gas From E-420 WR
PT ORP

Emergency Absorber Cooler

Chlorine Gas From SP-410 Chlorine Gas From R-230 Chlorine Gas From T-710

NA
LI

Hypo To T-710

LT PI PI

Hypo To D-720

P-744A

P-744B

T-730 Emergency Cl2 Gas Absorber

D-740 Hypo Tank (2)

P-744A

P-744B

Cl2 Gas Absorber Blower

Emergency Absorber Pumps

CCM Chemicals (M) Sdn Bhd PLO 411, Jalan Perak Satu, 81700 Pasir Gudang, Johor, MALAYSIA.

Process Flow Diagram (PFD): Emergency Chlorine Gas Absorption Process Drawing No.: Scale: NTS Drawn: Checked: Date: March 29, 2011

Figure 2. Emergency Chlorine Gas Absorption Process Page | 4