Christian Müller,
Marketing and Communications Manager
Honeywell Building Solutions
Bayer Industry Services GmbH & Co (BIS) owns and operates the largest chemical complex in Germany, uniting the concern's production sites located in the cities of Leverkusen, Dormagen and Krefeld. It also provides a wide range of services beyond the chemical complex. Today, the strategic areas of activity are: the creation of promising technologies, the development and production of specialized products in the fields of pharmaceuticals, medicine, agriculture, food and light industry, new materials and related industries.
The corporation's scientific and production activities are concentrated in its three industry subgroups: Bayer Healthcare AG (healthcare), Bayer CropScience AG (agriculture). Bayer MaterialScience AG (new materials). Marketing, sales and service activities are carried out by three functional companies: Bayer Business Services GmbH, Bayer Technology Services GmbH, Bayer Industry Services GmbH & Co. OHG.
The corporation supports the chemical industry and related industries with its solutions. For example, the Bayer Chemical Park in the German city of Leverkusen is one of four high-tech production complexes in the chemical industry in Germany. And today it is beginning to master new open building technologies. The Honeywell Enterprise Buildings Integrator™ solution from BIS was chosen as the platform for integration.
This technology park is more like a city within a city: being on a separate territory, it is closely connected with the life of the city of Leverkusen. The total area of the complex is 4 square kilometers, on which the factory buildings are located (there are almost 630 buildings in total), and 30 thousand jobs have been arranged for the city residents. In recent years, it has undergone significant development and now occupies one of the top lines among chemical industry enterprises in the world.
As mentioned earlier, in addition to the active development of the chemical industry, the company «BIS» also offers its clients services for the management of building systems, thereby guaranteeing the continuity of technical solutions for the entire complex of buildings.
The corporation has a Central Services department, where Axel Janetschek works. He is responsible for the building control technology, and also monitors the progress of other direct computer (digital) control technologies, which are essential for any control system used for group automation of buildings.
In order to quickly meet the needs, in particular of HVAC systems, and customer requests, BIS is currently pursuing a policy of integrating heterogeneous automation objects. The Honeywell Enterprise Buildings Integrator™ (EBI) serves as a platform for integrating equipment from different manufacturers. According to Janešek, this platform was chosen due to its convenience, efficiency, and compliance with the BACnet standard and OPC interface.
Honeywell's EBI solutions also facilitate full integration within the Excel 5000 direct computer control system. New features that facilitate integration include the ability to transmit information via modem to an archive. Many of the campus buildings needed to be connected within the company network.
The integration process began with just 70 data source points, and the system was based on direct computer control implemented on the novaNet bus by Sauter AG.
This approach to automation can be called «cross-platform». The EY3600 novaNet system bus connects the network under the BACnet protocol with the client, which uses the integration system from Honeywell. All this is organized via a combined BACnet-EYK300 server. The BBMD function (BACnet/IP Broadcast Management Device) implemented in it makes it possible to directly connect to the nodes of the computer network, sometimes bypassing even the cluster boundaries defined by the routers. Soon, hardware solutions from Sauter AG were implemented for another 50 points. Other data source points were connected via the direct computer control system from Kieback&Peter and, accordingly, integrated with EBI. A little later, they switched to one large integration platform capable of processing 1000 physical and virtual points. During this automation process, part of the work was taken over by the BACnet network, connected to other points via the Neutrino GLT system (Kieback&Peter). This resulted in an additional 150 data points connected to the EBI integrator via the Honeywell BACnet DDC Excel Web system.
Also no less important was the solution of temperature and climate control problems in 11 server rooms. Since there were not many control points per server room, BIS specialists decided to save money and organize integration (and connection to the EBI integrator) via the OPC protocol and the WAGO I/O 750 system. According to Janešek, such a decision to use the EBI industrial integrator, which supports LonMark, Modbus, SINEC HI and many other interfaces, has already fully paid for itself. Also, the use of the EBI system in the BIS network made it possible to access data in real time and is carried out through an Intranet browser and a client site.
The adoption of such automation decisions and further cooperation of companies within the project ensure technical continuity for the entire complex of buildings and guarantee the smooth operation of the entire complex as a whole.
Based on materials from the BIG-EU Association's journal «BACnet Europe Journal» |
