ReNew ELP, a UK-based advanced recycling company, has selected Emerson (NYSE:EMR) as its digital automation partner for its new plastics recycling plant in Teesside, North East England. Emerson’s advanced automation technology and software will help achieve safe, efficient operation of an innovative hydrothermal process to convert end-of-life plastics back into their original feedstock to produce new plastic products, reducing waste and pollution.
Currently, many post-consumer plastics, including flexible and multi-layer plastic packaging items, such as films, pots, tubs and trays, are considered ‘unrecyclable’ via traditional mechanical recycling methods and are instead sent to landfill or incinerated. After a short first-use cycle, 95% of plastic packaging material value, or $80–120 billion annually, is lost to the economy, according to the World Economic Forum.
The ReNew ELP plant will utilize a ground-breaking advanced recycling process called HydroPRS™ (Hydrothermal Plastic Recycling System), that uses supercritical steam (high pressure and temperature) to convert waste plastics into the valuable chemicals and oils from which they were originally made. These products can then be used to manufacture new plastics and other materials.
As the main automation contractor, Emerson will be responsible for developing a complete automation and control solution to ensure safe, efficient operation of the demanding production process with minimum operator intervention. Emerson’s Project Certainty methodology, which digitalizes project execution, will help deliver the plant on budget and on schedule, while its Operational Certainty methodologies will help ReNew ELP realize maximum operational performance and profitability over the lifecycle of the facility.
As part of the automation solution, Emerson will provide an integrated control and safety system, incorporating its DeltaV™ distributed control system and DeltaV safety instrumented system for process and emergency shutdown, plus fire and gas detection. Emerson’s Plantweb™ digital ecosystem, incorporating wired and wireless networks that support clusters of advanced measurement instrumentation, will provide visibility to process performance and actionable data about equipment health. The automation system will feature a broad range of severe service and general-purpose control valves, on/off valves and pressure control technology. A range of asset management solutions will be deployed to enhance equipment reliability and increase process availability and throughput, while minimizing the time operators spend in the field performing manual inspections.
Courtesy of Emerson.