Southern States Chemical (Chemicals, U.S.)

Going Green with a Greenfield Plant​​​​​​​
Wilmington, N.C.-based Southern States Chemical planned to build a new, state-of-the-art facility on a neighboring site to meet EPA regulations and expand production capacity. In order to do away with manual operations, the organization would also upgrade to an automated system.
As with any large-scale capital project, the greenfield plant needed to be built to the best possible specifications while also keeping down the expense of building a brand new facility. By making some key choices in the early stages of the project, Southern States was able to do just that.

Finding Savings in Flexibility
In the early stages of planning the new plant, Southern States made a key decision. The organization found that it was able to recycle major plant components from a nearby decommissioned government munitions plant. By recycling components, Southern States would be able to save an estimated 20% on the cost of the new facility. However, in order to preserve this cost savings, Southern States needed to ensure that integrating the old equipment (and its variety of I/O types) with newly purchased equipment would not delay startup or increase costs. In order to keep down costs and risks of integration while not sacrificing on performance, Southern States chose Emerson’s DeltaV™ Distributed Control System (DCS) with Electronic Marshalling for its control system needs.
Later in the project, Southern States made another key decision. The organization chose to implement Electronic Marshalling with CHARMs technology, the first of its kind in North America. Adding the flexibility of Electronic Marshalling with CHARMs allowed Southern States Chemical to terminate all plant I/O in 10 junction boxes located around the plant. These junction boxes connected to the control room via two Ethernet cables, significantly decreasing the necessary field wiring.
The flexible I/O of CHARMs offered the additional benefit of allowing late engineering changes. In a number of cases, an I/O point ended up in a different cabinet from the one that was originally planned. Using CHARMs, the implementation team could easily relocate the I/O module without added difficulty or cost.

Translating Choices into Savings
By choosing Emerson’s DeltaV, Southern States was able to eliminate a number of project costs. Overall, the project’s capital cost savings were significant. Southern States cut construction and wiring costs by 40% over what they would have been with traditional marshalling cabinets. In addition, the organization was able to make a number of late-stage changes to the project without incurring cost overruns.