ABB has designed and installed a distributed control system in record time for one of the world's largest aluminium smelters, Dubai Aluminium Company Limited. The new system helps the company increase energy efficiency and maintains industrial productivity in its power plant.

Dubal operates one of the largest single site aluminum smelters in the world, having produced 1,009,772 tonnes of cast aluminium products in 2009. In a bid to reduce maintenance costs and increase energy efficiency, Dubal selected ABB to upgrade the distributed control system for one of the company's heat recovery steam generators, located in the 2000 MW power plant in Dubai, UAE. For its part, ABB's distributed control system ensures that there is a reliable supply of power to the production facility and Dubal's extensive smelting operation can continue without interruptions.

The project was no ordinary upgrade; the system needed to be upgraded during Dubal's planned 100 day outage at the plant. During this timeframe, ABB was commissioned to perform the complete engineering, procurement, integration testing and installation of its Procontrol P14 distributed control system for the steam generator. One of the benefits of the P14 system is reduced maintenance and inventory costs due to minimum number of modules. The system is user-friendly and offers uniform hardware for the power plant DCS as well as the plant's protection system.

ABB successfully installed the control system for the steam generator in the given timeframe. The ABB system was integrated online with other existing systems without shutting down other plant areas, thus ensuring industrial productivity was maintained.

Mr Roly De Leon Babaan project engineer for Dubal said that "ABB completed the job in a very challenging timescale and in a professional manner. We're impressed by ABB's commitment to speedy and high quality project execution."