Brazil: Food Oil Refinery

Smar, one of the world’s leading suppliers of instrumentation and control systems, recently supplied more then 200 Profibus PA devices for a new food oil refinery in Brazil. Cocomar is a leading supplier of food grade oils in South America. Their Maringá City facility is located in one of Brazil’s largest industrial areas and began operations at the end of 2001. Processing capacity at this time was 200 tons of oil per day. With an investment of approximately US$3.5 million, the processing capacity was increased to 420 tons per day. Renovations included a new vegetable oil refinery, multi combustible boiler, energy debasing and large cereal drying systems. Cocamar is now the largest PROFIBUS-PA installation in Brazil.

The Profibus system was installed in the soy and multi oil refinery where flow, acid, soybean dosing, water, steam, level and temperature controls are performed.

Smar provided Pressure, Level and Flow Transmitters (Model LD303), Temperature Transmitters (Model TT303) and Valve Positioners (Model FY303), whose inputs were utilized for loop control. Smar’s unique Profibus to Analog (4-20mA) converter (Model IF303) was also utilized for complete system integration of all required field signals.

All field devices were integrated to other manufacturers such as Siemens, P+F, Krohne and Metroval and system interoperability was verified. The system operates with Siemens PLCs (S7-400), and ASI network interfaces from P+F. The Profibus PA segment configuration where Smar devices are located was performed using the Siemens Simatic PDM tool. SHW Company of Brazil handled system integration and project management.

The new plant has been in operation since September 2001. Cocamar’s Automation Engineer, José Cândido says “System interoperability and startup were excellent and the plant is operating very well. The cost reduction and simplicity of Profibus were confirmed and now we are capable of monitoring maintenance behaviors, which also show great improvement”.

Smar … Providing Reliable Choices!

For more information, please visit http://www.profibus.com.