"We now have a sub-second OPC data archiving platform we can use to analyze events in a High Pressure Polyethylene Plant. OPC has given us the data needed to make minute-to-minute decisions."
Engineering Specialist, Major Petrochemical Company
Without having access to real-time data, the best any process plant operator can do is base decisions on educated guesses . That wasn’t good enough for an engineering specialist for at a polyethylene plant in the southern U.S. The scope of the project was to replace old and unreliable DOS-based applications with Windows-based applications. It was important to use a published and scalable platform, so the engineering specialist turned to OPC as the standard connectivity technology to use in the project.
The plant housed a Honeywell TDC3000 and a fault-tolerant Triconex control system, which needed to be connected to a new Vista-Controls Vsystem, a collection of comprehensive, real-time, networked process control software tools. Vista-Controls Vsystem comes equipped with an OPC client, enabling it to connect to any OPC DA server. To connect the Triconex system to the Vista-Control application, the MatrikonOPC Server for Triconex was configured. To connect the Honeywell TDC, the system’s Appnode TPN software, which was already equipped with an OPC server, was used.
The entire integration went smoothly. "The MatrikonOPC Server for Triconex required very little effort to get it up and running," says the engineer. "We now have a sub-second OPC data archiving platform we can use to analyze events in a High Pressure Polyethylene Plant. OPC has given us the data needed to make minute-to-minute decisions."