PROJECT
PROFILES

CF Industries Reconfiguration II Project

This project was a merit award winner in the national ABC Eagle Award competition in 1998.  In addition it won an ABC Pelican Chapter Excellence Award and was also cited by Louisiana Contractor Magazine as the "best instrumentation/electrical" project of its size that year.

In September 1995, CF Industries, Inc., approved a $305 million expansion of their Donaldsonville, Louisiana fertilizer complex. This expansion included a fourth urea plant with granulation, a third nitric acid plant, a second UAN solutions plant and additional product storage and loading facilities. After the project was approved, engineering contracts for the design of the new facility were awarded to UHDE, GMBH in Dortmound, Germany; M. W. Kellogg Company in Houston, Texas; and Salman and Associates in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

In March 1997, Kellogg Constructors, Inc. (KCI), the construction division of the M. W. Kellogg Company, awarded Industrial Specialty Contractors (ISC) a cost-reimbursable contract not to exceed $10.25 million for all labor, equipment, and supervision to perform 100% of the electrical and instrumentation work, as well as all of the process tubing and steam tracing.

ISC maintained an average workforce of 130 associates over the 15-month project duration, peaking at 252 associates. A total of 386,667 work hours were spent by ISC to complete the electrical and instrumentation portion of this project, which ended in June of 1998.

As an integral part of the project construction team, ISC was involved in the decision-making process for all major disciplines, not just issues pertaining to the electrical and instrumentation scope. The goal of the project team was to have a safe and successful project. This team concept was the key to successfully completing this project on time, under budget, with a quality installation, and with a safety record that has set new standards for construction at CF Industries, Inc. production facilities.

The project was divided into four major work areas: permanent utilities and LAN System, offsite construction, power distribution, and four new process units.

The installation of the permanent utilities and LAN System included more than two miles of communication and fiber optic cables, and 15,000 feet of 34.5 KVA high-voltage feeder cables.

The offsite construction included a new cooling tower with four, 2400-volt water pumps capable of cooling 85,000 gallons of water per minute; a new automated rail car loading facility with its own distributed control system (DCS); a new state-of-the-art radial barge loader that eliminated the need for moving the barge during loading operations; a new truck load-out facility with weigh scales, a 40,000-ton UAN storage tank with inlet and outlet pumping stations and a level control system; and 4,000 feet of conveying systems to carry product to a new 23,000-ton urea warehouse and the barge loading dock. Also required to support the offsite facilities were local power distribution racks and a remote DSC I/O building.

Power distribution and operation control included a new electrical substation with 34.5 KV switchgear, 5 KV switchgear, 600-volt switchgear, 480-volt motor control centers, variable frequency drives, uninterruptible power supply (L/PS) systems, emergency generators with automatic transfers, a fire detection system, an interposing relay system and emergency shutdown system along with transformers, power panels, disconnects, lighting contactors and an HVAC system. Five I/O buildings were built to accommodate the Honeywell TDC 3000 digital distributed control system linked through a network of fiber optics to a new operation control center that serves as the heart of plant operations.

The major portion of this project was the construction of four new process units that are among the largest of their kind in the world. They include a urea structure that stands just over 200 feet in height to accommodate a 400-ton reactor, a granulation unit, a UAN solutions unit, and a nitric acid unit. Combined, they accounted for more than 950,000 feet of wire and cable installed in over 35,000 feet of cable tray and raceway and 168,680 feet of electrical conduit.

ISC installed 1,105 light fixtures with 252 lighting panels, disconnects, and transformers. Power and controls were installed ranging from 2400 volts to 120 volts to supply 352 electrical motors.

ISC also installed over 23,200 feet of piping for instrument air supplies, 21,500 feet of process tubing and 31,000 feet of steam tracing. ISC received, calibrated, and installed 4,350 field instruments. More than 1,700 control loops were checked out and turned over to the project start-up team, which included both ISC and CFI field technicians.

ISC was responsible for the installation and check out of several unique systems that included an instrument air drying system; a sulzer compressor skid; Bauermeister roll crushers; ABB variable frequency drives; Ronan nuclear level detection systems; Panametrics ultrasonic metering systems; multiplex alarm systems; a deluge system; two Frick refrigeration systems; Bently Nevada vibration monitoring systems; and a Honeywell distributed control system.

The combination of these and many other unique systems makes the CF Industries Product Reconfiguration II Project the largest, most automated, and most productive nitrogen fertilizer production facility in the world.