Henkel Panels

Our Client

Applied Integration have recently provided Henkel Ltd with three control panels, one floor standing and the other two wall mounted. Henkel are a German based company who specialise in Adhesive Technologies, Beauty Care and Laundry and Home Care.

Well known consumer brand names in the UK associated with these industries include Loctite, Unibond, Pritt, Schwarzkopf, Right Guard, Colour Expert and Persil but there are dozens of other brands sold worldwide.
In this case our client is Henkel UK, who have a manufacturing facility based in St. Neots, Cambridgeshire. Henkel chose AI due to our experience in this area of work and our vast amount of knowledge.

Client Requirements

This project is a prototype and if successful, will be implemented at other Henkel sites around the globe. The project consisted of three areas, solids addition, solvent addition and overfill protection. To achieve the project requirements, which included safety (SIL3/PLe) and non safety elements, AI selected suitable equipment from the Rockwell GuardLogix and the Rockwell CompactLogix PLC ranges.
The Overfill Protection element is primarily used to prevent unsafe overfilling of various chemical storage and process tanks on the plant by stopping pumps and closing valves as required in response to the unsafe condition.
The Solids and Solvent Addition elements are closely related and are associated with the transfer of solvent and resin between various source/destination storage and process tanks and their addition into the standard operating process.

Applied Integration designed and built three control panels to house the Rockwell PLC’s, variable speed drives, intrinsically safe barriers and ancillary equipment.

Client Aims and Project Benefits

We implemented a new protection system based on Rockwell GuardLogix to improve onsite safety conditions. This primarily relates to Overfill level protection of the various tanks but also to shutting down pumps via Emergency Stop pushbuttons and the interfacing of these to the safety PLC.

The system was automated and the level of automation associated with both the Solids and Solvent Addition elements has been vastly increased, with an increased level of visibility of the process to the operation staff. The customer has provided new equipment to control the addition of resin into the process and this is under the control of the new control system, previously this resin was added manually into the mixing tanks by the operator.

The increased throughput and efficiency benefits of the new control system will result in a projected return on investment (ROI) of £400k per annum for the customer on this site alone.