As in most countries across the globe, health is also one of the main concerns of Brazilians. This is what a survey published in 2018 by the Federation of Industries of the State of São Paulo (Fiesp) points out, in which eight out of ten respondents say they strive to have a better diet. This movement can be seen by the increase in the supply of healthier products, such as organic foods, natural sweeteners, among others.
For production companies to meet this growing market demand, investment in technologies that help optimize their processes is essential. This is what Amyris, a company specialized in extracting essences derived from sugar cane substrate, came to look for it at Altus. The North American company was hired to produce the new line of sweeteners for a traditional Brazilian manufacturer of healthy foods and looked to Altus products for the technological basis to automate the production line.
For this project, two automation panels were used, each with a set of PLCs from Nexto Series, our most advanced line of products, responsible for controlling all stages of the plant's production process, located in the city of Maringá/PR. The CPU chosen for this application was NX3005, model with integrated power supply, high processing speed – 1000 Boolean instructions (contacts) every 6 microseconds – and large data storage capacity. In addition to these features, the unit also has WebServer support, which allows the creation of supervision and application monitoring screens without the need to use a SCADA system.
The panels also have a wide variety of I/O modules, the PROFIBUS NX5001 remote and an HMI for local control and operation.
In addition to the products, all panel assembly, application configuration and acceptance tests were carried out by the Engineering team at our Panel Factory located in the city of Sapucaia do Sul/RS. After the solution was consolidated and sent to the client, one of the technicians from our Support team traveled to Maringá to provide training to the professionals responsible for operating the system at the end client.