BASF’s Ludwigshafen, Germany, site now includes a new world-scale production facility with the capacity to produce 90,000 mt/y of acetylene. The process uses raw materials very efficiently, providing high yield, while the heat given off during production will serve for generating energy. Around 20 production units at the Ludwigshafen complex use acetylene as a starting material for a wide variety of products.
The construction site spanned 40,000 m2. Around 750 employees and contractors usually worked on the site every day, rising to as many as 1,500 people per day in peak times. The plant required a total of 35,000 m3 of concrete and 8,500 mt of steel.
The facility includes 440 customized columns, machines and appliances; these were manufactured in 12 different countries and also in BASF factories. Some components spent up to eight weeks in transit to Ludwigshafen.
The longest component manufactured specifically for the facility — a 60-m long and 225-mt column — was transported by ship to Ludwigshafen and lifted to its final position in April 2018 by a crawler crane and a 1,000-mt mobile crane.
The site also features a 90-km-long pipeline network.
Ensuring Process Safety
When it came to planning and implementing functional safety, BASF opted for state-of-the-art safety technology from HIMA, Brühl, Germany. This consists of hardware, software and engineering to protect and secure safety-critical production processes in this complex project.
Meinrad Rämisch, senior E&I engineering manager at BASF, explains: “We have been working successfully with HIMA at the Ludwigshafen site for many years and have found the experience with our partner’s safety solutions to be excellent. It seemed logical to also rely on HIMA’s technology and expertise for the new acetylene plant.”
In the new acetylene facility, HIMA’s controllers not only perform classic emergency shutdown duties but also handle the complex functions involved in starting up and controlling the equipment. The SafeEthernet protocol ensures safe cross-communication between controllers at safety integrity level 3 (SIL 3). Fast response times in the event of a safety shutdown and the high operational safety (SIL 3) within safety-critical production processes contribute to the acetylene plant’s high availability and productivity. Additionally, the HIMax hot-swap function enhances the future-safe design of the unit as redundancy allows implementation of upgrades during operation.
“The regular DCS, SIEMENS PCS7, handles all basic process control functions of the acetylene plant including the complete operation and monitoring,” notes Rämisch. “All safety-related tasks are controlled with the subordinated HIMA HIMax system, dominantly. These tasks include the qualified management of various burner systems with [their] startup and shutdown sequences. These sequences are synchronized with the DCS operation, again.”
Just-In-Time Delivery
HIMA and BASF started their joint work on this project in 2017. After the intense planning phase, in 2018 HIMA delivered 61 BASF control room racks based on a total of six HIMax systems (Figure 1). Integration of 103 X-HART modules into the HIMax controllers enables read-out of the field devices. HIMA wired and factory acceptance tested the HIMax controllers in-house and delivered the pre-assembled complete modules, including the separation layer, in accordance with the “just-in-time” requirements of the construction site. This ensured smooth installation and timely construction progress while relieving BASF of the effort for on-site basic wiring.
