Thermoplastics, petrochemical companies partner with Emerson for digital automation and engineering services

Global software and technology company Emerson, Austin, Texas, has announced a strategic partnership with Braskem Idesa to provide digital automation technologies and engineering services across its operations to meet business metrics and reach its sustainability goals.

Braskem Idesa is a joint venture between Sao Paulo, Brazil-based thermoplastic resin producer Braskem and Mexico City, Mexico-based petrochemical company Grupo Idesa. The companies say a multi-year transformation roadmap will leverage Emerson’s experience in the petrochemical industry and its portfolio of advanced automation technology and software to improve operations and help reduce Scope 1 and 2 greenhouse gas emissions by 15 percent by 2028. The companies say they want to achieve full carbon neutrality by 2050.

The roadmap will utilize Emerson’s operational certainty methodology, which provides a framework for scalable improvements in some of the four key transformation work streams. According to the companies, those work streams include:

• Information management, including creating a data architecture for real-time KPIs and decision-making.
• Physical loss control, with enhanced energy management and loss control systems.
• Production and energy optimization with advanced control technologies.
• Reliability and energy efficiency using data analytics, continuous emissions monitoring systems, LED lights and fugitive emissions reductions.

Braskem Idesa says the four work streams align with its strategy for the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions through energy efficiency, renewable energy use and low carbon intensity process technologies; renewable feedstocks and postconsumer recycling; and capturing carbon emissions to use as raw materials, value-added chemicals and as an alternative to future carbon taxes.

“Successful leaders are realizing that sustainability initiatives are also good business,” says Mark Bulanda, executive president of Emerson’s Automation Solutions business. “Reducing waste and unnecessary raw material consumption, lowering energy costs and driving profitability, all while improving environmental sustainability, is absolutely possible with the right focus and resolve.”