Neste

The Finnish oil refining company Neste is the world’s leading supplier of renewable diesel. The company invests significant resources on continuous research activities. While most of the equipment of the company’s R&D unit is controlled by automation systems, part of the laboratory scale equipment was based on manual unit controller technology. As the experiences from a modern and efficient automation system were extremely positive, a decision was made to also have the smaller-scale equipment integrated into a modern control system.

Neste aimed to find an agile control system providing all the necessary features and that would be particularly suited to laboratory-scale research equipment.

The project was carried out following the traditional method as far as possible while trying to avoid interruptions in the research activities. Therefore, preparations were made to the extent possible in external locations.

At the first stage, the customer provided the control diagrams and the process PI diagrams, which determine how the control should work in all conditions. Circuit descriptions and other specifications, as well as the preferences of the researchers and users were reviewed during the kick-off meeting discussing also in detail the requirements and needs of the solution.

After the specification phase, the actual application programming was done at Pinja and the necessary features and software were finalised for the Factory Acceptance Test.

The system was delivered to Neste, carefully tested together with the personnel, thanks to which only two working days were necessary for taking the system into actual use. During the introduction, it was confirmed once again that everything worked reliably and as planned. The quality of the project and delivery is best described by the fact that there were no disturbances in the automation system, and research work could continue according to the scheduled R&D programme.

Versatility, visuality and accuracy of finish are the key benefits of the CompactRIO system that forms the core of the automation system. CompactRIO is also perfectly suited to control equipment of this size, because, despite its lightness, it ensures a sufficiently high level of features and functionalities for this particular research need.

Through the customer’s eyes, a key success element in the project was Pinja’s application knowhow in National Instruments’ environments as well as knowledge of control principles of continuously operating processes.

During the cooperation, services of National Instruments’ alliance partner, Pinja, were used in updating, modification work and communication with National Instruments.