NovaTech, LLC

Volume 15

1st Quarter 2007

NovaTech, LLC Phone: 1-800-253-3842 www.novatechweb.com

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The recent State of the Union address

outlined a national energy policy that

will include a sevenfold increase in

domestic ethanol production in the

coming decade. A combination of

and standardized industry practices,

and cellulose conversion technologies

(among others) will make this ambi-

tious undertaking possible. Though

the hurdles of transition are never

easy, it is clear that ethanol (and other

fuels such as biodiesel) will form a

growing component of American

energy strategy for the foreseeable

future.

To help meet this challenge, two

NovaTech customers made substantial

investments in renewable fuels, and

are building new ethanol and biodie-

sel facilities and expanding existing

ones. The ethanol facilities use both

dry grind and wet mill production

methods, and will be controlled by

the D/3 Process Automation System.

These new facilities, combined with

existing ethanol plants operating on

D/3, will control approximately 25% of

U.S. ethanol production in 2008.*

“The economic, environmental and

geopolitical forces driving ethanol

growth are substantial and unlikely to

diminish,” notes NovaTech Chairman

Volker Oakey. “NovaTech has taken a

leadership position in this important

Ethanol Application software lever-

ages a decade of industry experience

to minimize application development

migration path of D/3, unmatched for

peace of mind.”

The ethanol industry has already

created nearly 200,000 jobs in

America, and a growing number of

the operators for those plants will

have received their training on a

D/3 Ethanol Plant Simulator. The

Renewable Energy Technology

program at Minnesota West Commu-

nity & Technical College incorporates

D/3 workstations to train their stu-

dents on ethanol plant operation.

Students begin training on the

D/3 system by following SOP start-up

and shut down procedures. Instruc-

tors can trigger process malfunctions

and evaluate a student's ability to

maintain optimal plant conditions in

the classroom environment. This

results in a reduction of on-the-job

training time, particularly for those

students who go to work at a D/3-run

facility.

NovaTech VP Dwight Wood summa-

rizes, “ethanol and biodiesel are fast

becoming major components of a

multi-faceted, dynamic approach to

American energy independence.

NovaTech is proud of its ongoing

contributions to the technical and

educational leadership of the renew-

able fuels industry.”

* source: ethanolproducer.com

December 2006

(‘08 U.S. EtOH)

4= D/3

[One Quarter of U.S. EthanolProduction in 2008 Will beControlled by a D/3®]

Hung Viet Industrial Engineering, JSC

(called “IEC” locally) is located in Ha Noi,

Vietnam. IEC has been earning a

and project management since their

inception in 2001.

Andy Blumenthal, General Manager for

NovaTech’s process businesses in

Europe and Asia, states, “this alliance

Asia. Vietnam is currently the second

fastest growing Asian economy and

the latest member of the World Trade

Organization. It’s a market with

tremendous potential, and this new

alliance will allow us to build on our

installed base of D/3® systems already

in the country.”

Mr. Nguyen Tuan Anh, Director of IEC,

adds “We are very excited about our

new partnership with NovaTech. We

share similar business goals and our

two companies focus on the same

industrial markets. Our experiences

with NovaTech’s products and services

have impressed us with their innova-

tion and reliability. The D/3 will allow

us to provide our customers with the

very highest levels of satisfaction.”

N E W A L L I A N C E

M A K I N G B E E R . . . B E T T E R ? !

NovaTech Forms Alliance with Vietnamese Integrator

This past year and into 2007,

NovaTech worked closely with Miller

Brewing and their design-build

contractors to provide several turn-

key automation solutions resulting in

lower production costs and better

tasting beer.

Several projects involved the replace-

ment of swing-pipe panels with

banks of mix-proof matrix valves,

eliminating the need for manual

hookups and improving process

We worked closely with Westfalia

engineers to install some of the

largest centrifuges ever used in the

brewing industry for the purpose of

separating spent yeast from the

fermented beer. Each of these new

centrifuges replaced several smaller

ones and resulted in lower production

costs and better yeast separation.

We also partnered with Briggs of

wort boilers on their brew kettles.

These new wort boilers provide

tighter control and greater consis-

tency from brew to brew.

Every one of these projects was a

provided overall project management

and NovaTech supplied the automa-

tion expertise and application soft-

ware.

Left to Right:Andy Blumenthal and Arjen

Siccama, (both NovaTech)Nguyen Tuan Anh, James Sun,

Tran Quoc Hiep, and Le Van Loi

by Bob Ard

NovaTech and Miller:Recent Projects

O T H E R N E W B U S I N E S S

N E W C U S T O M E R

When WPS decided to segregate their

plant operations from the existing Air

Products control system they had

several options to choose from.

The decades of reliable service from

the existing APCI - D/3 Process

Automation System was a factor in

their decision, but NovaTech’s ability

to upgrade legacy systems was

perhaps more crucial.

The original APCI applications were

developed more than twenty-two

years ago, and only the D/3 is sup-

ported by NovaTech’s Platinum

Pledge: Leave No D/3 Behind.

(or, according to our legal depart-

ment: “NovaTech will never obsolete

a customer’s PAS asset.” )

Working in partnership with WPS,

NovaTech will supply a new version

12.2-3 D/3 system. The existing APCI

applications, will be preserved and

migrated to the upgraded system.

We are privileged to have Wacker as

one of newest members of the

NovaTech® D/3® user family.

Water Treatment PlantJacksonville, NC

The city of Jacksonville, NC selected

and mobile Supervisory Control and

Data Acquisition (SCADA) architecture

for their water treatment plants. The

complete turnkey SCADA System

included engineering, programming,

HMI development, assembly, and

installation. Orions communicate via

radio to sixty-one remote RTUs each

polled approximately once a second

via Modbus. The project consolidates

three separate telemetry systems into

a single functional system that can

move easily if the SCADA Master

station should change locations.

Plant Supervisor Ray Holder notes,

“one of the biggest improvement of

the SCADA system by NovaTech was

replacing the old QEI telemetry

system we were using to monitor the

40 wastewater pumping station to the

new radio control system. We were

constantly in scan fail with the old

system and now with the new system

have very few comm fails. This is

collection system and have improved

the reliability of our wastewater

monitoring program tremendously.”

Lion Co-PolymerBaton Rouge, LA

Lion will update their existing D/3®

from version 9 to version 12.2 in a

beginning in March, will include

advanced process control and migra-

tion of graphics from PVN to

TotalVision®. The second phase,

slated for 2008, will include additional

advanced process control, process

modeling, and process optimization.

A three-year Facets™ support agree-

ment will provide an on-site engineer

during the development.

Wacker Polymer Systems (WPS), in

Calvert City, Kentucky is the most

recent D/3® user and member of the

D/3 family.

WPS is a joint venture with Air Prod-

ucts & Chemicals, Inc. (APCI), based in

Allentown, Pennsylvania. The Calvert

City site produces polymer powders

for the construction chemicals

industry supplying the U.S., Canadian,

Mexican and Central American

markets.

Welcome Wacker Polymer Systems, L.P.

technologies made their debut on theworld stage. One was the compact discplayer (originally introduced byCBS/Sony in Japan), and the other wasthe D/3® Process Automation System. Both products revolutionized theirrespective industries of entertainmentand process control. But whiledigitized music is migrating to robust,portable hard drives for storage, thecontinuously evolving D/3 controlarchitecture is more adaptable andpowerful than ever. Online Upgradeswithout process interruption and thenew 8000 Series I/O family are thelatest chapters in a continuing traditionof innovation.

The 2007 User Conference (August26-29th in Baltimore, Maryland) willinclude a look back at key moments inthe evolution of D/3 and its uniqueguaranteed migration path. We’ll also take a look forward to the next twenty-

include many renewable fuels applica-

tions. These include the rapidlyexpanding ethanol and biodiesel

expanding list of NovaTech partnersand technologies aimed at leveraging

technologies to reduce energy cost perunit of production.

Whether in your car or in your plant,renewable fuels will play an importantrole in keeping a process economicallycompetitive and environmentallyresponsible.

We would also like to welcome ournew Software Development ManagerSue Schroeder to our R&D group. Shebrings over twenty years of experiencein software R&D and project manage-ment (most recently with Omen, Inc). Welcome, Sue.

Sincerely,

Buz Zey

Volker Oakey

B U Z W O R D S

A U T O M A T I O N P R O J E C T O F T H E Y E A R

Dear Valued NovaTech Customer,

Volker Oakey, Chairman Buz Zey, President

NovaTech Technical Sales Manager Eric Schultz (second from right) joins Russ Fanning(center) and representatives from Cooper Power Systems and PennWell Publications toaccept the award at this year’s DistribuTECH conference in San Diego.

SAN DIEGO, CA - A substation automa-tion project using the Orion and the DA(Distribution Automation)-Mastersoftware won Utility Automation andEngineering T&D magazine’s “Automa-tion Project of the Year”.

Now applied on critical loads in ahalf-dozen industrial parks and residen-tial feeder systems in SE Wisconsin, theOrion DA-Master helps reduce poweroutages to less than one minute peryear per customer. The Orion DA-Master software can be applied onboth Utility and Industrial electricalgrids to reduce outage minutes.

The working relationship between

NovaTech Process Solutions and

Archer Daniels Midland (ADM) spans

the globe, several decades, and a

number of collaborations.

NovaTech has been working closely

tune the online upgrade functionality

of D/3® to proceed without process

interruption. The recent upgrade of

their Cedar Rapids Cogen facility

migrated the system from version 10.2

C U S T O M E R F O C U S

to version 12.2-3 while production

was underway. Since November of

last year, NovaTech and ADM have

performed four (4) online upgrades

while the facilities were operating.

A multi-year Facets™ support agree-

ment just signed will include addi-

tional online upgrades at many of

ADM’s thirty D/3 facilities around the

globe. NovaTech and ADM also

executed a Select Supplier Agreement

in 2006 to provide D/3 and 8000

Series I/O automation solutions for

new facilities planned over the next

three years.

ADM’s Clinton, Iowa facility will also

D/3 with the Orion Automation

Platform in an integrated substation

automation application. The Orion

platform will be utilized in a Utilities

Management application to pull

substation data back to D/3 for

improved substation operation and

management.

Four ADM Online Upgrades Completed

Over the past year, NovaTech has

implemented several new standard-

ized methods for performing and

assessing D/3® upgrades. Developed

by recently promoted Field Engineer-

ing Manager Mike Eads, the steps in

upgrade preparation are:

1. A D/3 Site Survey, which is a

complete analysis of the customer’s

implementation including all CDCM,

DCM, OCMs, PCMs, network design, I/O

layout, and any peripheral equipment

attached to the D/3 network.

2.upgrade will complete a Microsoft®

Visio® drawing of the current and new

installation. If the customer permits,

the engineer will collect all the D/3

3. This information is recorded in

Clientele for ongoing support records,

and NovaTech Product Support

analyzes the Site Survey and Visio

drawing.

4. The NovaTech Testing Department

duplicates the upgrade environment in

the Owings Mill test lab.

To date, thirty-three upgrades have

been performed using the new proce-

dures, including four online upgrades

performed during plant operation.

After each upgrade, Mike and the other

obstacles and opportunities for

upgrade methodology of the D/3 is

O N L I N E U P G R A D E P R E P A R A T I O N

Mike Eads on Upgrade Preparation

Mike EadsManager, Field Engineering

Initiatives

training at customer sites to ensure

multiple support personnel available for

each site, measure skills and provide

engineers in Clientele call investigation

S A V E T H E D A T E I N T H I S I S S U E

April 24 - 26: AM Expo

Atlanta, GA

April 30 - May 4: World Batch Forum

North American Conference

Baltimore, MD

August 26 - 29: 2007 User Conference

Baltimore, MD

Feature: One Quarter of 2008 U.S. Ethanol will

be Produced with a D/3

Product News : Four Online Upgrades Com-

pleted without Process Interruption

Vietnam Alliance: Hung Viet Engineering, JSC

Miller Project Review: Making Beer... Better?!

“Automation Project of the Year” Award

Copyright 2007 NovaTech, LLC. All rights reserved. D/3, SABL,TotalVision and FlexBatch are registered trademarks of NovaTech Process Solutions, LLC.NovaTech is a registered trademark of NovaTech, LLC. All other trademarks and/or registered trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

Smarter Solutionsfor Process and Utilities

Corporate Communications

11500 Cronridge Drive, Suite 110

Owings Mills, MD 21117

®

®

2007 User Conference

August 26 - 29Baltimore, Maryland

FIRST CLASSPRESORTEDUS POSTAGE

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