An extraction plant for recovery of essential oils, aromas or other natural extracts is based on longterm well-proven processes. Manufacturers of mechanical engineering and control technology have to cope with special challenges in case such a plant has to be designed in accordance with American specifications.

In the currenct case SPANGLER Automation was commissioned by Devex Verfahrenstechnik GmbH in Warendorf to plan a control system for a pilot plant for the extraction of medicinal plants according to the American norms UL508A and UL698A and set up the required control technology within four months.

UL508A regulates the entire manufacturing process for the production of industrial control panels in North America, up to start-up. UL698A is the base for control cabinets which are applied in especially hazardous locations.  SPANGLER is one of the few German manufacturers certified to produce control cabinets according to UL norm 698A in order to supply the American market accordingly. As in this case the essences are extracted with highly flammable ethanol, the plant had to meet the prerequisites for the potentially explosive section (Class. I, Div. 2), in compliance with the National Electrical Code.

From Töging to Colorado

The specification comprises the control system, including data storage with remote access, an operation cabinet with touch panel as well as programming and visualisation of the plant, completely manufactured on a Skid frame. SPANGLER has a longtime experience with American norms; thus, although designing a plant under these extraordinary circumstances is quite demanding, it could be solved at a good pace. In order to ensure correct functioning of the plant, it had been completely assembled, wired and tested at SPANGLER before it was delivered to Colorado.

The application of SPANGLER quality at the international pharmaceutical market is a promising field because the extraction of medicinal plants is interesting for numerous industry branches, especially for the pharmaceutical, cosmetics and chemical industry.

What is more obvious than to apply a kind of energy storage for electric power generated by renewable energy, which brings the power at any time to other sectors like traffic and industry in order to decarbonise them. Electrolysers, which convert green electricity into green hydrogen, are the technical key components for this. H-TEC SYSTEMS GmbH has developed such electrolysers (PEM process) that achieve the conversion with a degree of efficiency of up to 95%. With green hydrogen low CO2 and pollutant emissions with cars, lorries, trains, ships etc. can be achieved. For this project SPANGLER Automation has designed the switch system and the control system with process surface.

The PEM elektrolysers from model series ME100/350 are applied in Germany’s biggest green hydrogen mobility project eFarm. Many participants are involved in North Friesland with the generation of green hydrogen from wind energy which is put on the market as fuel. As the complete technology of the electrolyser is installed in a 20 feet container, a decentral application of this gas generator is no problem.

Riskless operation

This flexibility, however, becomes obvious with the requirements to the operation. As the electrolyser can virtually be applied anywhere, the operating interface has to be designed in a way that also operators with a short training time can cope with it. Additionally, a number of assumptions and redundancies have to be considered in order to exclude the risk of possible malfunctions as the gaseous hydrogen is highly explosive. Therefore, as safety performance category Safety Integrity Level (SIL) 2 was realised. This aims at finding and minimising possible risks for customers, plants and operators in advance.

The generation of green hydrogen which is acceptable from the economic and ecological point of view, in order to apply it as fuel or storage of huge amounts of energy is one of the central challenges connected to the conversion to renewable energy generation. SPANGLER Automation helps to manage this.

They are the electronic supervisors of machine controls, data flows and data security: the Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition Systems (SCADA). Therefore, the task of the SPANGLER programmers for process control systems is clearly defined: The control technical basis for the intelligent use of large data volumes and the linking of manufacturing and process machines.

A sophisticated process control system is the basis, especially for large industrial plants or multi-step processes. Such a system does not only control the data flow but also registers, records and evaluates the data. In this way, plant operators and operating engineers receive information about setting and performance values of the individual machine and manufacturing data, their maintenance status and the components which get close to their wear limit. “In this way the plants increase their productivity as less maintenance time is needed. In addition, the plants’ life expectancy rises,” Christian Brandmüller, Managing Director at SPANGLER, states. “SPANGLER has established a comprehensive pool of experience due to a large number of projects. Our programmers for process control systems work competently and professionally and are constantly in contact with various manufacturers.”

Message in case of risk 

Nevertheless, if there is an incident or even a hazardous situation, the system automatically triggers an alarm. Thereby, the alarm level depends on the gravity of the incident and ranges from a short text message to one or more recipients to the release of a red alert.

The scope of a process control system depends on the dimension of the elements and processes which must be controlled: As far as the hardware is concerned, everything is possible from a simple PC to the server operating system. Regarding software SPANGLER opts for products constructed modularly from FlowChief or SIEMENS – so that customers always receive the appropriate system.