Frontieras Taps Yokogawa for $850M West Virginia Processing Plant Automation
Frontieras North America has selected Yokogawa Corporation of America as the Main Automation Contractor (MAC) for its flagship FASform™ Solid Carbon Fractionation facility in Mason County, West Virginia. The $850 million project represents a landmark deployment of non-combustion hydrocarbon conversion technology designed to process 2.7 million tons of coal annually into liquid fuels, hydrogen, and industrial chemicals. Under the agreement, Yokogawa assumes single-source responsibility for delivering the plant's complete control, safety, analytical, and digital operating infrastructure. For broader corporate details, visit the official Yokogawa portal.
Central to the automation scope is Yokogawa’s flagship CENTUM VP distributed control system, which will manage closed-loop process units alongside safety instrumented systems designed to maintain operational integrity across non-combustion thermal processing circuits. The complete lifecycle contract spans front-end engineering design, field analytical instrumentation, control room design, operator training simulators, and enterprise plant historians. Engineering teams will construct the facility's control architecture in strict compliance with IEC 62443-SL2 cybersecurity standards to safeguard real-time data flow. Modern downstream operations increasingly depend on resilient DCS controller architecture combined with specialized industrial automation software to maintain yield consistency, reduce emissions, and streamline maintenance schedules.
The groundbreaking for the Mason County site occurred in April 2026, marking a pivotal step toward commercializing zero-waste hydrocarbon fractionation. The facility operates in a reducing atmosphere to dissemble coal into valuable products, including ultra-low sulfur diesel, naphtha, jet fuel, FASCarbon™ solid fuel, and ammonium sulfate fertilizer, supported by a patent portfolio spanning nine major coal-producing nations. State estimates project the facility will deliver a 3% incremental GDP boost to West Virginia while creating 2,000 construction jobs and 200 permanent operational roles.
By integrating advanced field instrumentation with enterprise-level predictive analytics software, plant management can closely monitor continuous process variables and asset health across thermal disassembling loops. Joseph Witherspoon, CTO and Co-Founder of Frontieras North America, highlighted Yokogawa's deep domain expertise in process control, analytical instrumentation, and industrial cybersecurity as vital factors in choosing the platform for this first-of-a-kind production asset.
Written by Garrett Sterling, a senior industrial automation engineer with 18 years of experience designing DCS hardware architectures, SCADA networks, and safety instrumented systems for heavy process industries.