The Challenge

Global competition drives all chemical manufacturers to seek ways to improve efficiency, reliability, quality, and sustainable performance. European chemical manufacturers face unique challenges in energy costs and regulatory requirements compared with other regions of the world.

Why it Matters

Competitiveness requires the ability to offset higher energy costs and additional regulatory requirements. Valve selection and lifecycle management play a significant role in operating these production processes with higher availability, greater reliability, and lower emissions.

Three Takeaways for European Chemical Manufacturers

• Tighter process control that enables more efficient operations requires all elements in the control loop—valve, sensor, and control strategy logic—to perform at optimum levels.
• Focusing on control, isolation, and pressure relief valves is essential for reducing fugitive emissions.
• Shifting from pneumatically-actuated valves to electronically-actuated valves reduces overall energy consumption.

In this podcast, I’m joined by a team of Emerson chemical industry experts to discuss how valves, actuators, and regulators can help drive improved performance and meet increasingly stringent regulatory requirements.

Give the podcast a listen, and visit the Unlock Efficiency and Reduce Emissions section in the chemical industry section on Emerson.com.

Transcript

Jim: Hi everyone, I’m Jim Cahill with another Emerson Automation Experts podcast. The chemical sector in Europe is facing unprecedented pressure. balancing Net Zero ambitions, energy efficiency, and competitiveness, while continuing to supply essential products for society. I’m joined today by a host of chemical industry experts, Jacqueline Onditi, Jean-Paul Boyer, Oznur Celikkol, and Sergio Zaghen. We’ll explore the challenges operators face and how properly adapted solutions can help them tackle these challenges, not in theory, but in real-world applications. Welcome all. It’s great to have you on the podcast.

Sergio, let’s start with you. Can you highlight some of the unique challenges faced by European chemical manufacturers and how they manifest in day-to-day operations?

Sergio: Yeah, sure, Jim. I think the European chemical manufacturers are operating probably in one of the most challenging environments. Mainly they need to face four biggest challenges, high energy costs, then we have a tight regulatory compliance, we have an uncertain demand, and aging plants. And when we look at these challenges, they don’t remain only at a broad level, but the way that we deal on a daily basis with maintenance and operating of the plant, we see how they also appeared in the daily operation.

For example, let’s talk about the high energy prices. High energy prices and costs has always been a structural issue in Europe. And high energy costs means that it has a direct impact on the variable cost of the chemical plant. And we see this, how it impacts the daily operation, because the chemical manufacturer, they have to decide which unit to run, at what load, and when. And so there is also a kind of reorganization and the definition of what the plant load can be. And also energy is a kind of very expensive things. So there is a big focus on trying to reduce the energy. And when we look at, okay, where do we waste energy in a chemical plant?

So we see how it is important to have, number one, control loop that are efficient because energy control loop are the one that eventually determines the efficiency of the plant. And then we know that valves and actuators could be a bigger contributor to the inefficiency or a waste of energy if they are not well designed and maintained. So when the energy is expensive, the automation moves from something nice to have to what we see as survival tool. And that’s why me and my colleague, we are always asked, to contribute and help the chemical operators.

When we talk about the regulatory compliance, we know that the European Union have put a very, I would say sometimes complex framework in order to reduce the emission. So we have emission limit, we have carbon taxes, we have recently last year it was signed the Industrial Emission Directive 2.0. But at the end, you know, what we notice in the plant is that all this regulatory compliance put more focus on where we do have emission, in particular fugitive emission.

And when we talk about the fugitive emission in a site, 60% of the equipment responsible for fugitive emission are valves. So we really see a big interest, you know, in the technology and on ways to reduce the fugitive emission. But the new thing of the, for example, the Industrial Emission Directive 2.0 is that the focus is not only to the technology to reduce the emission, but it’s also compliance, is audit, is traceability. So we as a valve supplier, we are requested to run not only a one-off exercise in order to comply with the emission, but it’s a daily operation on how we can reduce the amount of efforts of auditing, reporting, and compliance.

Another challenge, we talk about the volatile demand in Europe. We know that the industrial growth in Europe is not big. We know that there are some cyclical sectors like automotive, consumer goods, that they don’t have a stable demand, as well as the European chemical manufacturer are suffering from an overcapacity globally, especially from chemical components coming from other world area, but the production costs are very shorter or smaller compared to the European one. And again, we see the direct impact on the daily operation. Why? Because originally our plants in Europe were built or optimized to run at 100% capacity, but this is not the case today.

So the loading on the plant needs to adapt to the market condition or to the cycle for that specific chemical component. And this directly translates into the fact that the plant needs to react very quick to demand, okay? And this puts a lot of stress, of course, on what needs to turn or switch or to allow the plant in order to react faster. And that’s why we as a valve, we feel we are one of the contributor to this flexibility and increase, especially your reliability to this plant. Because the last things you want when you need to switch the plant on or run full speed is that one of your components is failing.

And last but not least is the aging of the chemical plant. I mean, some of the plants in Europe were probably 30, 50 years ago. I think they’re probably older than me, I guess. And the assets now are not equipped with the latest technology. And here we see the challenges, challenges because we cannot ask or expect a European side to automatically upgrade everything to the latest technology. that would be totally not viable, economically speaking. And we as a supplier are kind of following the request of the chemical sector, which is let me get the most out of my equipment.

How through applying different type of technology like new actuation or digital tools in order to extend the lives or optimize the usage of the equipment that you have. And we know how valves are critical, so being able to extend their lives and optimize the use of the resources that you have is really the key of success for the European chemical manufacturer.

Jim: Well, you certainly raised a number of challenges, whether it’s the energy efficiency, the cost of energy, the emissions in there and just the required increased flexibility that they don’t have. So that really paints a picture of those challenges and the role automation and especially the final control elements can play in that. Jean-Paul, given the increasing regulatory compliance challenges for these European chemical producers, what solutions can help?

Jean-Paul: Thank you, Jim. Well, if I speak about safety valves at the moment, your first safety valve pressure relief valves, because they are forgotten most of the time, which helps that actually to release a strong potential for improved efficiency, we believe. Because, for example, if we look at pilot-operated valve, true modulating pilotoperated valve to protect critical equipment, compressors, or these kind of things, if we speak about our Anderson-Greenwood type 400, for example, it is a true modulating. What does that mean by true modulating?

We mean that when the valve really is, it really is only what exactly the system needs to be protected, okay? No more, no less, of course, but no more. So the valve is exactly and fully proportional from zero up to 100% of what the system needs, okay? What does that mean? What does that translate in real terms? I mean that reduce, of course, reduce vented emission to the strict limit. You cannot reduce it lower than that. It’s just exactly what the system needs to be protected.

That’s mean also that reduce waste, reduce cost, and also reduce emissions, so reduce the potential fines that may be linked to this kind of stuff. But on top of that, also, because it is true modulating, the valve provides a much smoother cycles. has been much less or less stress on the equipment that is protected, less stresses on the piping, on the associated instrumentation and so on. Okay, so longer life of the equipment.

And of course, being modulating as well, the pilot-operated are modulating means that is a repeatable excellency tightness, reducing leakage and so on, but also easy field testing. capabilities, immediately reducing the cost, maintenance, and running cost of the installation of the installation protected. But not just that, because also if we go with, for example, spring valves, spring loaded valve particular on the chemical plants, they are most of the time fitted with balanced bellows because of back pressure coming from the closed piping, the piping discharge system, and so on, valves connected to flare and these kind of things.

So balanced bellows mean that the valve is protected with metallic bellows, which is fragile. It has to be fragile, okay? And that means that it is prone to failure by mechanical fatigue most of the time. We’ve tried to improve that, but on our Crosby JBS Series, for example, by using a special incornelial low cycle fatigue. So it’s improved, but there’s still a risk of mechanical fatigue anyway. No, metal is completely immune for that.

So for example, if we go, for example, from service records, multiple service record that we’ve gathered with our colleagues on service and so on. In any given plant, more or less, you will have 2 to 6% of the balance safety valves in this plant, which have already with a bellows broken. That means that they emit to the atmosphere and they emit, of course, dangerous emission that may be flammable gases coming from the flare to the atmosphere to the surrounding of the plant. So very, very big risk here. And of course, once finally we discover that the bellows is broken, needs to be replaced, which is but an expensive exercise, of course, as everybody knows.

So discussing with customers what we have done, actually, we’ve taken the experience that we have accumulated on our pilot-operated valves by using elastomer diaphragms since the 70s. And we have adapted that to a new design of our balance spring valves that we call the JDS, very clever, your D for diaphragm, of course. So now we have a spring-loaded valve, which is balance not by using a metallic bellows, but by using an elastomeric diaphragm. So by using a diaphragm, of course, it’s far more resilient than metallic bellows. So literally, there’s no fatigue, so longer life.

And if there is longer life, of course, you reduce the maintenance cost, operating cost, and so on, but also reduce the emission risk. And what we have seen on top of that is because the diaphragm is very flexible, we also improve the valve performance. By that, I mean we improve the lift of the valve. The valve can lift higher and also, which is a bit counterintuitive compared to a balanced metallic bellows, which by using this elastomic diaphragm, we can increase also the back pressure the valve can accept. So better operating characteristic as well.

And then maybe another point that also we developed over with operators, but also in cooperation with our Emerson colleagues from the measurement division, is the close monitoring of the safety valve. So we have integrated monitoring into our safety valves to bring solution on, again, mainly on critical equipment, but bring a solution that will give the operator full view of what is happening during an overpressure event in real time.

So even we can quantify as well how much process fluid is being vented to the air, to the atmosphere during this overpressure event. So what does that mean? That at any moment in time during a relief event, the operator will be able to get all the information from this relief event, even on the spring-loaded valve, for example, balance bellows valve.

We can also detect when the bellows is failing, if it is failing immediately in real terms. So what does that mean? Of course, enhance the safety of the installation of the plant, et cetera. Because you know when the valve opens, white opens and so on. Because that the value is opening, you can plan what to do in the next step. So planning safe costs. So you can reduce, of course, the unplanned shutdown, emergency shutdown, these kind of things.

And you get, of course, a timestamp data about the event that you can put in correlation with all the process data. And with this, that gives you a complete analysis of the event. enabling you to find solutions to prevent reoccurrence, and of course, reduce maintenance costs, reduce end plant shutdown, et cetera. And of course, we also reduce the operating cost.

On top of that, you still have the report that will give you the possibility to report to the authorities and so on, what was actually vented out, instead of trying to guess, you know, to overestimate what the valve may have released to the air and so on. So with this kind of solution, we can directly reduce emissions, reduce the maintenance costs. And of course, on top of that, the cherry on the cake, improve the safety of the installation and the efficiency, of course, of the installation as well.

Jim: That’s impressive technology. One, just reliability with the bellows and the problems they have with it over time and the safety aspects that you touch on, regulatory reporting. Yes, so many advantages with the technology to really help in emissions management. Can you share any examples maybe where this has been applied?

Jean-Paul: Example, yes. On the ammonia plant, for example, vaguely, of course, I cannot give too much detail, but the operators, they knew that they had several safety valves that were relieving quite often. But these valves, of course, they’re discharged through common piping systems, so it was extremely difficult to know which valve was opening and when, particularly when it was opening. If you don’t know which and when, you cannot deduct to why, and so you cannot solve the problem. So that will occur again and again and again, increasing maintenance cost. You find the value, you dismantle the valve, the valve is open, it is damaged, and so on and so forth.

Okay, so cost and maintenance costs are quite important. So the customer approached that, of course, and we discussed and we implemented, so the integrated monitoring on some safety valves, some of our safety valves. And from this monitoring of the safety valve, then the operator were then immediately fully able to know what was happening, when, and if you know when, by why, which safety valves, they were able then to deduct why, okay, putting that in correlation with the other data of the process and so on. And then when you know why, then you were able to bring solution, maybe also in some cases, is to modify the way they were running the process, adding some modifications on the process on the piping and so on, to reduce the recurrence.

That means they reduce product loss, reduce waste, and so on. In the end, reduce downtime, maintenance cost, reduce also compliance cost, less emission, et cetera, and so on. As I remember, for example, not this operator, but from another operator, they did the exercise and they estimated from each relief event, depending on the safety valve that they had, they put the cost at each relief event between 2000 to 50,000 EUR per event. So that’s something that can also bring some saving directly to the bottom line, yes.

Jim: Yeah, it sounds like there’s a real case for return on those investments there. That’s very impressive. So Sergio, let me come back to you. What innovations have been made in valves to support greater efficiency, lower emissions, and safer operations for these manufacturers?

Sergio: Yeah, so Jim, first of all, I want to touch the point of the addition. The Environmental Protection Agency in the United States run a lot of audit and they came with the outcome that 60% of the causes of fidgetic emission were bugs. This study has been repeated in Europe, in other, you know, in Canada, and they all arrive to the same conclusion. So you can imagine how we are in the focus of fugitive emission, supplying a control valve because control valve has a moving stem, either sliding or rotary. So it’s very prone to be the issue of the fugitive emission.

And that’s why in the last years, a lot of our efforts in the research and development and product issues have been really focusing on complying with one of the most popular fugitive emission standard, which is the ISO 15848.

So we are basically in the process of upgrading all our products in order to achieve the lowest fugitive emission class that we can get complying to the standard. So traditionally, you know, we went from CH to VH and now we’re successfully moving the majority of our product to AH. But as I said, it’s not only important to increase the technology and to reduce the fugitive emission.

Remember, let’s remember that when we get a certificate, this is a type test certificate. So it’s something that you. do in a lab. But what happened to the day-to-day? The chemical manufacturer then has to run audit and demonstrate that there is no fugitive emission. And this is where we have also developed the technology in order to anticipate and predict potential leakage.

Okay, so our valve, we like to call them intelligence, okay, because our positioner has embedded functionalities that can allow either to calculate, to calculate the friction, which is a direct indicator of the health of the packing, but also to anticipate before you have an audit if that packing or that valve is going to pass or fail the test. And we know that with the new fugitive emission directive, if you successfully pass several audits, you are allowed to conduct less audit, which means less paperwork, less costs.

Secondly, we decided to invest on the efficiency, okay? So if you take any chemical cluster of any industrial cluster, for sure you will find an air separation unit. Air separation is very common. Everybody needs industrial gases in order to run their operation. And when we talk about air separation unit, then we talk about cold box valve. Okay, the cold box valve are basically the heart of an air separation unit. But this valve can be a big source of energy waste or inefficiency. because of course, we run with cryogenic fluid. And when we know that there is cryogenic fluid, every heat loss is basically an energy loss, is an inefficiency as a cost.

So we have launched recently our cold box valve that we call it the Fisher IC2. IC2 because it’s an upgraded version of our previous model, which was the IC1. And one of the features of this valve, besides being equipped with the latest technology, is that we designed a special buffle. This is specifically built to increase efficiency. Okay, so to avoid at most the energy loss.

And last but not least, we also have this is not a new product, but is an upgrade of our flagship valve for the chemical market is the Fisher GX. GX was a very good valve for the general service, but we saw a request in order to upgrade this product and use it also for the process fluid. But when we talk about process fluid, the original GX design presented a safety risk, okay, because you could not turn the actuator or if the line was not inerted, there could be toxic or chemical fluid leaving in the valve and that was not acceptable. And that is why we upgraded our valve with a bolted-bond design.

In this way, the maintenance is easy, there is less risk of chemical leakage. And we have a product that was really a big success in the chemical market available not only for the general service, but also for the process and chemical fluid.

Jim: Those are some nice innovations to really help with, some of those challenges we’ve been discussing. Oznur, let me turn to you. Isolation valves play a critical role in chemical manufacturing processes. How can they enable greater performance in efficiency and emissions?

Oznur: I would like to make a separation between fugitive emissions and the total emissions in a plant, which is also linked to the overall efficiency. On that front, actually the European chemical industry made big improvements from 1990 until 2015, during which they actually cut by half the total emissions they had while increasing their overall output by 50%. Again, within 25 years, they made a big, big improvement. And then there was a plateau ever since. And the main reason being, well, basically reaching out to the maximum level of incremental improvements.

Then comes big investments related to the feedstock being, say, greener, using green hydrogen, using a bio-based feedstock, you know, carbon capture. All these projects require very high levels of investment. And that’s where we kind of see that plateau happening. But that at least provided a certain strength to the European chemical industry to deal with these high energy costs. But then the focus came to fugitive emissions of volatile organic compounds (VOCs), especially not just the greenhouse gases. And that’s where isolation valves do make a big difference. As my colleague just mentioned, 60% of these fugitive emissions or leaks are linked to the valves in an industrial plant.

So isolation valves do play a big role there. Not only that, but they also provide the functional safety requirements and the quick acting function together, which make them a perfect choice for not just as on-off valves, but also as emergency shutdown valves or as a part of SIS systems. Another important point, especially when you’re talking about chemical industry, is the material compatibility that these valves provide. You have this wide range of applications with many different challenges.

And in that regard, either the soft materials or the different metal alloys that are used in the valves, they provide this large selection In some cases, we have not only corrosive media, but the toxic media that we need to handle. And for those isolation duties, we have line valves that handle that task. There are also applications where hydrogen or oxygen service compliance is required, cryogenic or high temperature applications.

So it’s really a wide area of application when you talk about chemicals. And the current portfolio within Emerson provides all these selections, starting from Keystone, which is a very well-established brand in that space. for butterfly valves, and we have KTM for ball valves, and Vanessa, which is a triple offset valve, which is inherently fire safe, provides all these, you know, extremely good acting options, functional safety levels that are really hard to surpass. So I guess within this portfolio, we can handle all these challenges that the industry presents us.

Jim: Well, that’s some really important points, and it is a very broad portfolio in isolation valves to meet some of these challenges. Now, Jacqueline, let me turn it over to you. On pneumatic valve actuators, they’ve traditionally been a source of emissions or a big consumer of energy in compressing air. What are some of the ways that chemical manufacturers can address these posed challenges?

Jacqueline: Yes, Jim, when we speak of actuators, usually we’re not so much talking about emissions, especially in the case of pneumatic actuators, because the actuators themselves do not interact with the process. The actuator operates the valve, the valve interacts with the process. So we tend to consider the actuator as process neutral and valve specific.

So The advantage that you can have with the correct sizing and selection of the actuators on a chemical plant or any industrial plant is generally related to how efficient the actuator is at converting the energy that it consumes that it needs to operate into motive power to work the underlying valve to make sure that the underlying valve has the right control profile or is able, as Oznur mentioned, to shut down or to maintain safety integrity levels levels as required by the function.

And when we talk of energy saving, we start with pneumatic actuators and we’re looking at the energy that they require, which is compressed air that is provided by industrial compressors. We know that on industrial plants, industrial compressors are typically very energy-intensive. They are a significant part of the operating cost of an energy plant, of an industrial plant, to the point that they’re sometimes called the 4th utility. I’ve seen reports that state that as little as 20% of the energy consumed by an industrial compressor is actually converted into, let’s call it, into work. So into compressed air that is suitable to be applied to an underlying instrument, in our case, an actuator, and then converted into useful work.

So the logical solution would be to think of electrifying actuators. So moving the middleman in a certain sense of the compressor and bringing that electric energy directly to the actuator. And historically, this has not been done because there are two very important functions that pneumatic actuators provide.

And one is speed of operation that has typically not been available on conventional electric actuators. And the second, very importantly, is the so-called fail-safe action. That is the capability of an actuator to drive a valve to a safe position, even in the absence of the primary motive power, so either the compressed air or the electricity. With pneumatic actuators, this functionality is achieved because you have a spring typically in the actuator that’s opposed to the air cylinder. So the spring gets compressed, it stores kinetic energy that can then be released if you lose your compressed air.

So what we have now in recent years is an expansion of the electric actuator portfolio to include spring return versions. And for example, one innovative new product that we have is the Emerson RTS electric actuator series. So this is a pure electric actuator. This allows you to provide electric power directly to the actuator, but it also includes a spring mechanism that provides that stored kinetic energy that allows you to achieve fast operating speed in your fail direction and a fail-safe action if you lose your primary motive power.

Jim: Well, that is an important advancement to be able to use electric actuators, yet still have that fail-safe operation for those applications that require it. So, Jacqueline, has this approach proved successful?

Jacqueline: Yes, Jim, we’ve actually seen an initial strong interest and quite a bit of uptake from the oil and gas industry starting out. Now, this is because besides the energy consumption benefits that we can see from the use of these types of actuators, there’s also been a lot of interest in them as intelligent devices. This means that they can be integrated into the control protocols of the plant.

You can have communication with the same protocols that you are using on your instrumentation. You can communicate with Profibus or HART, for example. These devices are able to store information. They do event logging. They allow asset management, for example, mapping the valve torque curves so that you are able to monitor not only the health of the actuator itself, but also the behavior of the valve over time. This allows the plant or the operator to prevent or to predict valve stiffening, the need for seal changes, or the need for preventive maintenance. So there’s been a lot of interest also from that point of view, and not only from the point of view of energy saving. It’s generally an investment that definitely pays out over the operating lifetime of the actuator.

Jim: Well, this has been a great discussion so far. Let’s wind it down before we close it out here. And Oznur, I’m going to turn to you. Are there any other important points our listeners should be aware of?

Oznur: Well, actually, yes, Jim, thank you. for that. I wanted to mention a set of recommendations called NAMUR NE167 that represent the chemical industry’s expectations, well, recommendations, expectations from valve.

And we have recently launched a high-performance butterfly valve with the Keystone family, Keystone K-LOC Series 38, which complies with this set of recommendations. It was designed with this NE167 in mind. Of course, it complies with the fugitive emission standard, the 1.848, as Sergio was mentioning, BH plus.

And in terms of endurance, it can handle 2,500 cycles, which is quite an extreme number. for the on-off valve performance in terms of fugitive emissions. Not only that, the way it is tested, the way the valve actuator bundle can be done without, you know, extra bracket adapters or the coatings or you name it, all these, all these, all these asks are embedded into the product and it’s been quite a success in various applications across the board.

That’s one good example where a set of recommendations are met with one product. And then we moved on and we did that with lined valves and also with resilient seated valves. So I believe that that’s good news that a manufacturer can comply with all these recommendations at once. So just to give you one example.

Jim: Well, the regulations are constantly coming at us and we’ve got to keep innovating across all these areas we’ve talked about to help the chemical manufacturers do the things they need to do to operate reliably, safely, sustainably, and efficiently for what they’re doing. I want to thank you all for sharing your perspectives. What we’ve heard today is that Europe’s chemical producers face intense pressure. They must lower emissions, reduce costs, and remain competitive in a highly regulated environment.

Addressing these challenges is not about a single technology, but about a coordinated digitalization approach that includes advanced automation and flow control, actuation, pressure management, and isolation valves. The journey to Net Zero is complex, but with the right tools, collaboration, and innovation, These challenges can be transformed into opportunities for enhanced efficiency, reliability, and growth.

Make sure to visit the Unlock Efficiency and Reduce Emissions section in the chemical industry section on Emerson.com. I’ll make sure to add a link in the transcript or a quick search will bring it up for you. So thank you again to our experts and thank you to our listeners for joining us.

All: Thank you. Bye.

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