Rockwell Automation, Inc. (NYSE: ROK), the world’s largest company dedicated to industrial automation and digital transformation, today announced a collaboration project with Fluorsid S.p.A. that will see tighter monitoring and control of essential process variables at an HF kiln at the company’s Cagliari facility in Sardinia, Italy, using the FactoryTalk Analytics Pavilion8 model predictive control (MPC) solution.
Founded in 1969, Fluorsid S.p.A. is involved in the production and sales of inorganic fluorochemicals used in aluminum, special steels, and construction. At its four locations, it covers the entire fluorine value chain, from extraction, through production and refinement, and on to trading. Its plant in Cagliari produces a variety of end products, using a mix of reactors and kilns, all of which must be tightly controlled to help ensure product quality, process efficiency and optimized energy consumption.
The Pavilion8 model predictive control (MPC) solution offers an intelligence layer that sits on top of automation systems and continuously assesses current and predicted operational data. It then compares this data to desired results, and drives new control targets to reduce process variability, improve performance, and boost efficiency – all autonomously and in real time.
The kiln-control application was formulated by a specialist team from Rockwell Automation that included digital data specialists from Kalypso, a software delivery and consulting firm acquired by Rockwell Automation in 2020, specializing in the digital transformation of industrial companies.
Vladimir Obrazcov, director of digital business EMEA, Kalypso, said: “Energy-and-raw-material-intensive industries will always see significant benefits from the deployment of digitalized control solutions. Even small gains in operational efficiencies soon add up, not only driving plant improvements, but also optimizing raw material use, and cutting overall energy consumption.”
Daniele Tocco, site director at the Cagliari plant, explains: “Processes such as the ones we deploy have numerous variables and keeping them all in check is an intensive process. With the Pavilion8 solution, we will have an autonomous platform that can do all of this in real time, allowing us to be more consistent in terms of product quality and process performance. We are always looking for ways to increase efficiency, especially on some of our intensive processes, and we are expecting some real improvements using this MPC solution from Rockwell Automation”.
