Digital Transformation in air separation plants for chemical industry

Reliable and safe solutions with Digital Enterprise

The most important operational goals in automated air separation plants are to minimize production costs by reducing energy consumption and to ensure product quality. We support you in this endeavor as a strong partner with many years of experience. For numerous air compression applications, we offer reliable process, plant and safety solutions that are precisely tailored to your specific needs – including automation, electrification and digitalization.

Our experts for chemical industry answer your questions

Specific challenges Changing plant operations, complex processes, a high total cost of ownership, and growing competitive pressure in the market are just some of the many reasons for needing to continually maximize the efficiency of chemical and air separation plants.

Exploit potential in air separation plants

To remain competitive in the market over the long term, standards must be set for safety, availability, efficiency, and transparency. These can only be met when all existing potential is rigorously exploited.

Keeping an eye on efficiency and safety

The goal of our safety solutions is to guarantee process and plant safety throughout the entire lifecycle – for example, through ex protection, functional safety, defense-in-depth concepts and risk management. We achieve a high-level of plant efficiency and system integrity through service concepts that, among other things, enable transparent data management. For more opportunities increasing your production.

In the chemical industry, large quantities of oxygen and nitrogen are required for processing input and intermediate products. Energy supply and compression play a key role in the separation process.

For maximum efficiency, pre-cleaning, compression, cryogenic rectification of air or storage and filling must be kept within a very specific range of operating parameters. Siemens’ automation and measurement solutions help to maintain an ideal environment for the process at all times, even under difficult conditions.

Use cases and concepts Our concepts and use cases support you in a reliable and safe operation of your air separation plant over the entire life cycle.

Efficient maintenance concepts with SIMATIC PCS 7 and COMOS

Condition-based maintenance ensures a high plant availability and reduces operating and maintenance cost. SIMATIC PCS 7 and COMOS support you with efficient planning, implementation, and analysis of your maintenance activities.

Automation with SIMATIC PCS 7

Apps and digital services

Data analysis, condition monitoring and predictive maintenance are based on up-to-date plant data. Our industrial applications and digital services provide all the necessary information, to operate your plant more safely and with greater efficiency.

Efficient power supply

We offer a comprehensive portfolio of frequency converters, motors, couplings and gearboxes as well as reliable power supply, power distribution and electrical installation technology – from switchgear technology to the socket.

TIP
Industrial energy
Drive technology

Products Learn more about our customized products and solutions for your reliable and secure air separation plant.

Services for the chemical industry

From plant designs and concepts to retrofits, from the development of new processes to the optimization of existing ones – with our global network of experts, we can support you anytime and anywhere around the world over the entire lifecycle of your chemical plant.

Advanced process control

Energy and maintenance costs make up a large part of production costs. Precise monitoring and asset performance management is needed for cost optimization and control. For monitoring and analyzing assets, we use a variety of apps.

Cryogenic air separation

Monitoring and optimizing processes requires process analyzers, which deliver essential data from various plant areas on energy consumption and the control of product quality. These are crucial objectives for lowering production costs.

Package units

Many production plants have additional machines and aggregates that also need to be controlled. In many cases, these 3rd party package units are complete subsystem models for specific production tasks. They are easy to integrate into the air separation plant.

TIA Portal

Compressors

In air separation plants, powerful compressor units are needed that are suitable for a wide range of process requirements such as stability, flexible design, and a high efficiency rating.

Compressors and expansion
Turbine replacement

Steam turbines

Our steam turbines are applied either as a generator drive or as a mechanical drive for pumps and compressors. The modular design concept of all steam turbines ensures high flexibility and availability as well as reduced time-to-market.

Steam turbines
Dressser-Rand turbines

References Whether for the implementation of our systems in new plants or for the migration in current operations: Our solutions and services enable more efficient and more intelligent production throughout the world. In our references, you can learn about our comprehensive industry expertise and customized solutions.

Linde Gases Division

Germany

ROC around the world

Linde, the leading gas supplier, controls its plants around the world.
The air separation plants are controlled worldwide with just eight remote operation centers (ROCs).
Linde relied on Siemens solutions to implement the concept - Innovation through partnership.

Read the success story

Pigler Automation

Solution Partner

Test drive for SIMATIC PCS neo

Pilot project was a small OEM application of a separation unit with an Engineering Server with Monitoring & Control capability, as well as another Monitoring & Control Server.
Simulation of hardware and plant process with Siemens SIMIT Simulation Platform, leveraging a Virtual Controller.
Enhancements in SIMATIC PCS neo will help reduce the time between the start-up of a project and the end.

Read the success story

Air Products

USA

Leveraging MindSphere

Air Products is a provider of atmospheric and process gases and related equipment to a variety of manufacturing industries.
ProcessMD provides third-party customers, who operate their own plants, a web-based, predictive monitoring and fault-diagnostic platform to gain vital insights into their processes.
With MindSphere, the proprietary ProcessMD platform becomes a business model and provides seamless data brokering directly from the customers’ plants.

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We’re happy to help with any questions

Air separation plants must satisfy the most stringent requirements. Our solid expertise means we can ensure the processes in your plants are high-quality, safe and flexible, as well as being both resource and cost-efficient.

Our experts for chemical industry are here to help you