The latest edition of the ABB Ability Sugar Library has been released, enhanced with new functionalities to serve as a control engineering inventory for sugar manufacturers.

The library aims to help reduce engineering costs and development timelines, simplify expansions, eliminate errors in engineering and improve quality and reliability in operational use. The release features a range of specifically designed templates for sugar process applications in beet and cane sugar industries. It is designed to fulfil all process area requirements including raw materials handling, purification, crystallisation, and sugar handling, and now evaporation and filtration. Customisable templates help to ensure engineering efficiencies and efficient monitoring of processes helps to optimise resources and energy usage.

A high-performance human-machine interface (HMI) that includes alarm messages enables fast detection and resolution of process disturbances and the visual availability of tracking and trends ensures timeous maintenance. The auto-reconfigurable dynamic, high-performance HMI visualisations provided in the library for selected operations are designed to reduce commissioning time and help plant engineers and operators to focus on continuous improvement. The solution also features a steam economy mode to ensure that excessive steam is not generated during the evaporation phase. It is also collected and reused for the crystallization phase, saving any fuel used to make the steam and further reducing production costs.

ABB Ability asserts that its Sugar Library will benefit the company’s installed base customers, channel partners and system integrators, to help with plant optimisation, expansion requirements and new greenfield installations, ensuring a reduced total cost of ownership. It integrates with the latest versions of ABB’s distributed control system, ABB Ability System 800xA, and provides support for ABB Ability Manufacturing Operations Management. It can support end-customers’ digitalisation strategies, sustainability, quality improvement and waste reduction initiatives.

“ABB Ability Sugar Library enables reliability, quality, and engineering and operational benefits for our customers, channel partners and system integrators and aligns with our overall digitalization strategy in the food and beverage industry,” said ABB global head of food and beverage process industries Marcello Gulinelli. “We are encouraging efficient monitoring of the production process to help optimise resource and energy usage. This gives operators the information they need at the right time and allows flexible controls. We look forward to wider adoption across our installed base and potentially with new customers globally.”

Sugar manufacturers can take advantage of ready-to-use templates with control schemes for vacuum pans and associated Brix control, as well as for all other critical process areas including purification, evaporation and raw materials handling along with associated process equipment. Library provisions include efficient boil up curves with customisable algorithms. The tool offers operators improved control for steam economy, better shape, and homogeneity for crystals, with alerts and data logging capabilities throughout.