Application story /// Application story /// Application story /// Application story //

Industry: Process

Products Used: Control Systems/Modular

FACTORY AUTOMATION

MELSEC System Q: Controlling a

modern district power station

Safety and economy are top priorities for the builders and op-

erators of process installations. In Frankfurt, redundant con-

troller technology from Mitsubishi Electric protects the

Nordwest stadt waste incineration plant and the neighbouring

district heating power station against failures. A Profibus mas-

ter module provides centralised field device management and

the foundation for fully-optimised automation systems. The

planning, installation and configuration of the automation sys-

tems for the plants were carried out by KH-Automation Projects

GmbH, an automation partner of Mitsubishi Electric.

The waste incineration plant in Frankfurt Nordweststadt was

built in 1965 together with the neighbouring district heating

power station. Since then the two facilities have supplied the

city district with electricity and district heating. It was then de-

cided to convert the plant into a modern waste-fired district

heating power station with an annual incineration capacity of

up to 525,000 tonnes of household waste. Work on the conver-

sion and modernisation project began in 2004 and is being con-

tinued in a staged process. The modernisation of the district

heating power station has now been largely completed, to-

gether with the main section and two of the four incineration

lines of the waste incineration plant.

The objective of the operators is to combine the two plants into

a single integrated facility that will remain efficient and eco-

nomical for many years to come. One of the main specifications

for the control systems was that they should be able to guar-

antee trouble-free continuous operation of the waste-fired dis-

trict heating power plant. In addition to this the operators want-

ed to have access to up-to-date performance, diagnostics and

service data at all times, so as to enable inexpensive and sim-

ple servicing and maintenance. The engineers from KH-

Automation Projects installed exactly the same control and au-

tomation technology in both the neighbouring plants to max-

imise the potential synergy effects. A joint control room with

five control consoles provides comprehensive information on

the status of all components of the plants.

PMSXpro was chosen as the central process control system.

Distributed local process stations acquire the process data from

the individual plant units and then pre-process and archive the

data. The central control system is connected to the individual

automation stations via an Ethernet network.

The MELSEC System Q automation platform is Mitsubishi

Electric’s most powerful modular PLC system. Up to four CPU

modules can be installed on a single backplane, sharing the

load of the control, data processing and communications tasks.

The processes in the plant are controlled by special high-

performance CPUs designed for redundant configurations and

the requirements of critical industrial process applications.

Local communications take place via a Profibus master module

that supports up to 125 distributed field devices (slaves).

Application story first released in March 2006

Mitsubishi Electric Europe /// Factory Automation - European Business Group /// Gothaer Strasse 8 /// D-40880 Ratingen /// Germany

Tel: (02102) 4860 /// Fax: (02102) 486112 /// Email: info@mitsubishi-automation.com /// Web: www.mitsubishi-automation.com