Interviews with Emerson Automation Solutions and with Aggreko
Jonas Berge, Senior Director - Applied Technology, Emerson Automation Solutions
Could you give us an update on Emerson Automation Solutions' activities over the last year?
Emerson recently acquired a majority stake in AspenTech, which has a lot of software helpful to customers for their digital transformations and sustainability efforts. The world must build a lot of new infrastructure, for hydrogen and carbon capture for example, and this software greatly helps with the design, operation, and maintenance of such plants and the value chains surrounding them.
On the hardware side, Emerson is rolling out improved sensors. A lot of plants wrongly believed they already had sufficient data that they just needed to put to good use, but it turns out that many need a lot more data, and therefore more sensors. Have you noticed any trends in demand for your solutions from the chemical and petrochemical industry?
The Lithium-Ion battery market is booming, and many manufacturers are rushing to produce anode and cathode materials. We also see customers looking to make their plants more efficient and reduce their energy costs and reduce their emissions, especially with Singapore’s increasing carbon tax. Have you noticed discrepancies in the adoption of Industry 4.0 practices in the chemical and petrochemical industries?
We have found that a lot of smaller chemical companies seem keener on adopting automation and digitalization compared to large refineries for example. Perhaps this is because their smaller size affords them more agility, and it is easier to make changes to a smaller plant. In general, however, the industry overall is doing a good job of adopting industry 4.0 practices. Do you have any final comments?
The two current mega-trends are sustainability and digitalization/automation. The sustainability trend involves targets in the 2030-2050 horizon, so we will all have to stay on this course for a long time. It will involve advanced processes – which cannot be realized without automation.
Chandran Jayabalan, Head of Sales - Asia, Aggreko
Please introduce Aggreko and your solutions in Singapore?
Aggreko is a global leader in flexible energy solutions, with power generation, heating, and cooling services for short-term or emergency needs, in the form of flexible contracts that allows scaling up and down depending on requirements. Singapore serves as a strategic hub for our Asian operations, thanks to its good infrastructure and business-friendly environment. How can you serve the PCR industry locally?
We work primarily on turnaround and shutdown activities. Petrochemical facilities need continuous and reliable power supply. Our temporary power solutions can prevent costly downtime in cases where there is plant maintenance or power outages. We also provide cooling and heating solutions during such turnaround periods.
We also do process enhancement: PCR operations often require precise temperature control, so our solutions help maintain the right temperature. We also offer reactor cooling, which allows our clients to shorten their turn-around time, saving them significant costs in downtime.
We also do emergency response and provide proactive contingency planning solutions. What major trends do you see in the industry?
One major trend is the demand fluctuation for PCR products. In times of high demand, plants are sometimes unable to ramp up quickly enough to capitalize on the spike in demand, and that is where we come in with temporary solutions, to help them until they set up their own infrastructure.
In Singapore, space is premium, so the increased complexity of plants requires more temperature control and energy management.
Finally, the PCR industry is also looking at carbon sustainability, especially following the implementation of the carbon tax in Singapore, while digitalization and remote monitoring plays an important role to manage their emission portfolio. We offer a service called ARM (Aggreko Remote Monitoring), so clients can see the uptime of their power units remotely. Data is acquired in real-time and stored to be analyzed so that companies can plan smarter turnarounds for the future.