Extraction MCC Relocation

Customer: Food Customer

Project Type: Multi-discipline engineering project including civil, structural, mechanical, electrical and controls design to relocate an MCC out of a hazardous environment.

Project Scope: Matrix Technologies designed a new Motor Control Center (MCC) building, and installed a new MCC customer’s Soybean Processing Facility in Ohio. The main driver for this project was that the existing MCC was located in a pressurized room in a Class 1, Division 1, Group D area.

The new building and new MCC system needed to comply with safety requirements for an explosion hazard environment. In order to ensure that the system was intrinsically safe, Matrix implemented an Electrical Plan to provide an explosive proof electrical system. All NEC, state, and local codes and all customer Electrical Standards and Specifications were applied.

The new building was equipped with twenty vertical sections of an Intellicenter MCC with networked Powerflex Variable- Frequency Drives (VFD), and E3Plus motor controllers all using Ethernet for communications. The HMI of the system used a thin client based system with two redundant terminal servers. The PLCs were upgraded from a Texas Instruments TI-505 PLC to an Allen-Bradley ControlLogix system.

Engineering Challenges: The existing system was located in a hazardous area, so the main challenge was designing a replacement system outside of the hazardous area.

Products and Technologies Used: Rockwell Automation ControlLogix PLCs and GE Proficy iFIX HMI

Project Outcome: The system started up on time during a short outage that was planned well in advance.