Borealis

Process optimisation and quality control

“With the use of the integrated and standardised OCS Online “Closed Loop” concept, our offline laboratories at the plants are directly linked to the production process and enable continuous online measurement control. This ensures immediate process optimisation and allows us to determine our raw material quality. This enables us to guarantee faster classification and release of our products, which ultimately leads to better service for our customers.”

Filip Samson, Category Team Engineer OLPA-QC at Borealis

For more than 25 years Borealis has been a leading raw material producer and supplier of polyolefins, basic chemicals and fertilisers. Borealis has developed from its early roots in Scandinavia to become a global enterprise. It has operations on five continents – with plans to expand on three currently. Borealis and its 6,900 employees strive to create added value for their communities and society as a whole. Borealis and OCS have maintained a very cooperative customer relationship for several decades. Together they developed and integrated the standardised online “closed loop” concept for polymer facilities. The “Close Loop” concept is based on the idea of directly linking classic offline laboratories online through the production process in order to control both quality and the process itself. In doing so, small samples of raw materials are regularly tested (50 samples per hour) so that a representative overview of the production as a whole can be obtained. This analysis process consists of an online granulate analysis and an online measurement of extruded films.

Due to increasing production rates, more than 100 OCS online quality measurement instruments are now in use at Borealis and an online classification module (OLC) which has also been jointly developed to automatically calculate average values and provide the results accordingly.

A typical OCS installation for analysis and classification of products consists of two PE-LD lines. Each line consists of an OCS Pellet Analyser PA66 and an OCS Film Extrusion Line with corresponding OCS measuring systems. The OCS Pellet Transport System supplies the lines with granulate. The setup also offers the possibility of taking a sample from each line for quality control or external uses. The data is then transmitted to the OCS analysis software and the company’s own PDA system. Shoud the cause that no clean room or laboratory is available, the OCS Clean Room Container can solve the problem.

Look inside the OCS Analysing Container.