Print page

SynGest Selects Honeywell to Help Design Bio-ammonia Plant

ControlGlobal.com Staff
06/14/2011

SynGest Inc., a southwest-Iowa plant, will process as much as 400 tons of biomass each day to produce nitrogen fertilizer. This helps reduce fossil fuel emissions and will be sold to U.S. agricultural companies and farms.

Honeywell Process Solutions (HPS) has agreed to provide front-end engineering (FEED) support and a wide range of technology that will comprise the plant's fully integrated control system, including its Experion Process Knowledge System (PKS), UniSim process simulators and field instrumentation. Additionally, the proposed facility will use a pressure swing adsorption technology developed by Honeywell UOP to purify hydrogen used in the plant's processes.

According to Tracey Haslam, Americas vice president, Honeywell Process Solutions, HPS is engaged in developing breakthroughs in the bio-fuels and bio-chemicals space.

"We're investing our products and know-how in SynGest’s distributed industrial scale model because it represents the future of biofuels and bioproducts production." said Haslam.

SynGest CEO Jack Oswald believes Honeywell's expertise will be a great asset to this project. "Honeywell’s unparalleled skills in renewable fuels and bioproducts, and special expertise in automated process design and controls will add enormous value to SynGest's commercial-scale projects once implemented," Oswald.

Experion is HPS' primary process control and automation platform help streamline operations by integrating subsystems throughout a facility, including process control, safety systems and instrumentation. This approach provides information to personnel, helping them make the best decisions on the plant floor.

Many facilities around the world use UniSim to make processes more efficient and improve operator skills by testing processes and train operators in offline environments. The UOP technology purifies hydrogen processed in the plant's two-stage gasification system.