Executive Summary
Sapthip Co., Ltd., Chaibadal, Lopburi, Thailand
Established in 2006, Sapthip Co., Ltd., a subsidiary of Sapsathaporn Co., Ltd., produces ethanol for blending with gasoline. This gasoline blend, known as gasohol, is considered a renewable energy source because the ethanol is produced from cassava, a plant that is also grown as a staple agricultural product.
With its production of this renewable fuel, Sapthip is supporting the Thai government's policy of reducing the country's dependence on imported fuel. The company has been licensed by Thailand's Ministry of Energy, Committee on Renewable Energy and Energy Conservation to produce fuel-grade ethanol (99.5%).
Sapthip currently produces 200,000 liters of ethanol per day, for an annual total of 66 million liters. The company's goal is to become Thailand's leading producer of ethanol by improving the efficiency and reliability of its operations. In so doing, it aims to protect the environment and promote sustainability under a policy of "Creating sustainable energy for Thailand and protecting the environment."
Construction of Sapthip's ethanol plant began in 2006. PRAJ, an Indian engineering firm, built the plant and licensed its process technology to Sapthip. Yokogawa Thailand installed a CENTUM CS 3000 distributed control system to control the ethanol plant. Since the completion of this project in 2009, the installed systems have operated as designed, with no major problems. Under the terms of an annual maintenance contract, Yokogawa Thailand provides ongoing maintenance services to keep the production control system in good working order.
The Challenges and the Solutions
1. Steady and automatic control
The production of ethanol from dried cassava chips involves a sequence of batch processes that require careful automated control for maximum efficiency and product quality. Rocks and other foreign objects like twigs and leaves must be removed from the dried chips before the chips can be ground into flour. The starch in the flour is then dissolved into dextrins by a liquefying enzyme, and a saccharifying enzyme is subsequently added to convert the dextrin into glucose. This is fermented with the addition of yeast to produce a mash with a 10-12% ethanol content. Through a distillation process, the alcohol is then separated from the water and other non-fermentable materials, resulting in a hydrous alcohol with a 95- 96% concentration that can be used as a fuel in specially designed flexible-fuel vehicles. To convert this into an anhydrous alcohol with a 99.5% concentration that can be used in standard vehicles, the residual water must be removed by a molecular sieve dehydration process that involves the repetition of an absorption and regeneration cycle every 8-10 minutes.
With its sequence control function, the CENTUM system carefully controls all of these processes, including the feeding of materials and the execution of temperature profiling during fermentation. The condition and status of each process can be closely monitored in real time and accurately controlled by operators at the CENTUM CS 3000 human machine interface stations.
2. Quality control
The quality of the final ethanol product is very important. All of the ethanol produced by Sapthip is utilized in Thailand's domestic market. The final ethanol product is blended with conventional gasoline and can be used as is in engines. That's why the purity of the ethanol is very important. Every day, the technical division of Sapthip analyzes the product quality based on the data from the production control system, operator notes, and laboratory data.
Collaboration between central control room & laboratory
Collaboration between central control room & laboratory
Customer Satisfaction
Suthamma Yoosin, manager of Sapthip's technical division, comments as follows: "We always have enough cassava in our storehouse to keep us producing fuel-grade ethanol 24/7 for an entire year. But cassava prices continue to rise, and so does the need to improve production yield. We are always striving to improve our operation and also minimize energy consumption. At the same time, we take great care to protect the environment by treating the plant's waste water and decreasing the amount of CO2, NOx, and SOx that comes out of the plant's smokestack. For these reasons, we are very comfortable with using Yokogawa's CENTUM CS 3000, and are pleased with its reliability, ease of use, and easy engineering."
Sapthip production process
업종
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바이오연료
지구 온난화를 막기 위해 바이오 연료의 생산과 소비가 전 세계적으로 증가하고 있습니다. Yokogawa는 화학, 석유 및 기타 산업에 대한 측정 및 제어 솔루션의 선도적 제공 업체로서 바이오 에탄올 및 기타 재생 가능 연료의 안정적이고 효율적인 생산을 보장하는 데 사용할 수 있는 기술을 개발했습니다.
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화학
화학 플랜트는 연속 및 Batch 생산 공정에 의존하며, 각각은 제어 시스템에 대한 다양한 요구 사항을 제시합니다. 연속 공정은 실패하지 않고 생산 라인을 중단시키는 견고하고 안정적인 제어 시스템을 필요로하는 반면, Batch 공정의 중요성은 수식, 절차 및 공정을 조정하는 데 있어 큰 유연성을 허용하는 제어 시스템을 갖추는 데 있습니다. 두 종류의 시스템 모두 제품의 사용 가능한 품질 내역에서 관리되어야 하며 비일상적인 작업을 수행할 수 있어야 합니다. Yokogawa는 광범위한 제품 포트폴리오, 숙련된 시스템 엔지니어 및 글로벌 영업 및 서비스 네트워크를 통해 모든 공장 공정에 대한 솔루션을 제공합니다.
Related Products & Solutions
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Distributed Control System (DCS)
10,000개가 넘는 플랜트의 운영자는 매년 생산 목표를 달성하기 위해 Yokogawa의 DCS 기술과 솔루션을 신뢰합니다.