Usually, when commissioning a batch plant, EME engineers travel to site. Due to current international travel restrictions imposed by Covid-19, however, it was impossible for these specialists to travel from Europe to Chile in order to put the latest Cristalchile plant into operation.

Since Christalchile urgently needed the batch plant, EME worked out a concept to commission the plant via remote control from Germany, without the presence of EME specialists on-site.

For this purpose, Cristalchile provided several resources in the field of mechanics and control technology. This team was supported in advance with the necessary process descriptions, manuals, checklists and additional training by EME specialists via video conferencing.

Remote commissioning of the batch plant was essentially divided into two stages, the cold start-up and the hot commissioning.

According to the EME specifications, the first stage, the cold start-up, was carried out independently by Cristalchile, using the detailed information provided by EME. During this stage, all drive systems were checked by the customer, with frequency converters and soft starters parameterised.

For the hot commissioning, EME software engineers connected to Cristalchile’s system via secure EME VPN to activate the operating and control software. Simultaneously, video conferences ran parallel to commissioning. All scales were calibrated remotely.

The six hour time difference to Chile was compensated by flexible working hours at the customer's site and a two shift operation at EME. The complete batch plant was tested and successfully commissioned.

Since commissioning, the batch plant has been running continuously without problems.

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