The Tamnavulin Distillery in the beautiful highlands of Scotland had been lying mothballed for many years when Whyte & Mackay decided to bring it back into production. The whole distillery required re-wired and new pipe work as well as new key process areas such as CIP.

Canongate were asked to provide all field 24V control wiring along with process control for the two distinct process areas: Mash House and Spirit Stills. The Mash House control required full automation of the malt intake, mashing in and lauter tun operations. The still house control required full automation of the wash stills, spirit stills, pot ale and receivers. Ancilliary control was integrated into the effluent system and boiler house as well as monitoring various utilities.

A fully automated CIP system was installed and Canongate were required to integrate the automatic operation into the system cleaning both the mash house and the still house process areas.

The project was phased over approximately 18 months to fit in with planned production: starting with the malt intake and mash house functions, wash still charging and CIP, followed by full still house automation.

Control was provided by two ControlLogix PLCs: one in the mash house and one in the still house. Canongate manufactured the PLC panels and installed all of the field I/O wiring.

A SCADA system was required for the project and this was provided using Rockwell's FactoryTalk View SE. The SCADA was configured as a server and two clients: one in the mash house and the other in the still house. The still house operator screen was linked into a P&F stainless steel industrial touch screen panel suitable for hazardous area operation allowing the operators to fully control the operations from within the still house. Although designed to control their own area, authorised still house operators may have full access to the mash house area and vice versa.