Invensys wins major automation upgrade at BASF Ludwigshafen acetylene plant

Invensys wins major automation upgrade at BASF Ludwigshafen acetylene plant

Upgrade designed to extend the life of the plant’s I/A Series system – initially installed in 1989 – for at least another 15 years


Invensys Process Systems is currently working on a upgrade of the Foxboro automation system on BASF’s acetylene plant at the company’s world-scale petrochemicals complex in Ludwigshafen, Germany.

The acetylene plant is an integral part this highly integrated BASF Verbund site which overall produces more than 12 million tons/year of products such as plastics, chemicals, fertilizers and fibers.

A major challenge with this contract was to implement the upgrade without shutting down the acetylene plant because of the effects this would have on the rest of production at Ludwigshafen. BASF also wanted a solution that would extend the useful life of the existing I/A Series system, installed in 1989, for at least another 15 years.

Under this contract, Invensys has already helped BASF extend the eight existing Nodebus-based I/A Series process control networks using high-speed, Switched Ethernet technology. Existing I/A Series Application Processors and Workstations have also been upgraded with more powerful and current I/A Series Workstations. These reside on the new Switched Ethernet backbone.

In addition, a large number of existing I/A Series Control Processors have been upgraded to higher performance, higher capacity I/A Series Control Processors. Significantly, the Control Processors were successfully upgraded without any loss of production.

BASF is also evaluating the potential benefits of further extending the existing I/A Series networks using Foxboro’s advanced, “self-healing” Mesh Network technology, The Mesh Network combines standard Fast Ethernet switches with patented diagnostic software to achieve fault tolerant reliability within a single physical network.

About BASF

With approximately 81,000 employees, customers in over 170 countries and more than 100 production sites, BASF is the world’s leading chemical company. For more information, visit www.basf.com.