Horn Glass manufactures glass melting machines and equipment. The technology supplier has recently concluded the biggest project in the company’s history with the completion of the largest glassworks in Central Asia. Horn opted for Siemens process control, communications and power supply technology for the container and float glass line. This ensures end-to-end automation which allows continuous operation, consistently high product quality and low plant costs.
The sheer size of it is impressive: The new glassworks in Turkmenistan meets nearly all the container glass demand for the country’s food and pharmaceutical industries. The plants have an appropriately high output, producing nearly six million square metres of different types of glass a year, including laminated glass and transparent glass. This is the equivalent of more than 840 soccer pitches. In order to achieve this level of output, production must be smoothly and reliably automated and the plants have to be perfectly coordinated with each other. To this end, all supplied machines and plants are already fitted with compatible Siemens interfaces and components.
Keeping operations, quality and costs under control
“We use every part of the Siemens product range in the fields of process control, automation and drive technology as well as process instrumentation, switching technology and power supply in our projects,” explains, Horn project director, Markus Frank; and this is also the case in Turkmenistan. The brains of the glassworks is a Simatic PCS 7 process control system which is used throughout the container and float glass line (flat glass line). This user-friendly system ensures continuous operation, high product quality, low plant costs and energy-efficient production with low emissions. Siemens technology has also been installed on the inert gas mixing station as well as on these lines. Here, Siemens Calomat thermal conductivity analysers measure the water and nitrogen content. By measuring the thermal conductivity in a gas mixture sample, it is possible to calculate the concentration of nitrogen and hydrogen in the mixture.
Automation solution from a single source
Sivacon S8 switchboards were installed and communication is via the industrial Ethernet standard Profinet while standard Profibus is used for fieldbus communication. Simatic PCS 7-410H controls regulate the operations on the direct process level. In order to ensure a simple and efficient cabling design, Horn uses an ET 200iSP distributed I/O which is the best choice for the potentially explosive atmosphere. The modular peripheral is flexible and reliable and requires little engineering. The end-to-end Siemens solution in Turkmenistan is rounded off with field instrumentation from the Sitrans range, Sirius switchgear, redundant power supplies, and drive technology with Sinamics G120 and Sinamics G150 frequency converters.
Beckhoff’s XPlanar boosts productivity in medical device assembly Beckhoff Automation
Electrical switching & drive systems & components
The intelligent transport system, XPlanar from Beckhoff provided the basis for an innovative system concept allowing the specialists at Automation NTH to reduce the space requirement of an assembly machine for medical diagnostic devices by a factor of 10.
Read more...Smart features increase crane safety
Electrical switching & drive systems & components
The newly launched Konecranes S series hoist offers a large bouquet of smart features which not only increase lifting device safety but also deliver a higher level of operator protection.
Read more...Redefining industrial lifting
Electrical switching & drive systems & components
The Konecranes S-series hoist redefines industrial lifting through its integration of a ground-breaking synthetic rope with smart features, a lifting capacity of 20 tons, and the ability to adapt to diverse girder configurations.
Read more...Seven years of uninterrupted service
Electrical switching & drive systems & components
A set of hydraulically operated Corflex pinch valves, installed in 2018 at a major North African gold mine, has delivered in one of the continent’s most demanding slurry-handling applications.
Read more...New generation soft starter ranges Schneider Electric South Africa
Electrical switching & drive systems & components
Schneider Electric has launched its new generation Altivar ATS430 and ATS490 soft starter ranges in Anglophone Africa, the latest innovations in motor control technology.
Read more...Reinventing the wheel
Editor's Choice Electrical switching & drive systems & components
Once a curiosity in the early automotive age, in-wheel motors are now re-emerging with real promise. From electric cars to commercial vehicles and even aircraft, they are on the verge of transforming transportation engineering.
Read more...NORD modular drives for frequently changing motor speeds Bearing Man Group T/A BMG
Electrical switching & drive systems & components
BMG has made a substantial investment over the years to ensure assembly, stockholdings and technical support for the Nord range are in line with stringent international quality, safety and environmental standards.
Read more...PC-based control for sustainable fertiliser production on an industrial scale Beckhoff Automation
Electrical switching & drive systems & components
On a farm in the USA, valuable ammonia is extracted from slurry and processed into ammonium sulphate. NSI Byosis has transformed this complex process into a flexible modular system. This modular approach requires an automation solution with flexible scalability in both hardware and software, which this Dutch company has found in PC-based control from Beckhoff.
Read more...Redefining motion control with Festo’s vision for seamless and intelligent automation Festo
Editor's Choice Electrical switching & drive systems & components
The quest for precision, flexibility and efficiency continues to shape the future of industrial automation, and Festo, as a long-standing leader in automation technology, stands firmly at the forefront of this movement, driving innovation and setting the benchmark for excellence.
Read more...The opportunity and impact of MEPS electric motor regulations WEG Africa
Editor's Choice Electrical switching & drive systems & components
South African companies are gearing up for the new Minimum Energy Performance Standards, part of a global trend towards energy-efficient electric motors.
While every effort has been made to ensure the accuracy of the information contained herein, the publisher and its agents cannot be held responsible for any errors contained, or any loss incurred as a result. Articles published do not necessarily reflect the views of the publishers. The editor reserves the right to alter or cut copy. Articles submitted are deemed to have been cleared for publication. Advertisements and company contact details are published as provided by the advertiser. Technews Publishing (Pty) Ltd cannot be held responsible for the accuracy or veracity of supplied material.
printer friendly version