Instumentation • Computing • Control
Adaptive process control delivers greater profit
While there have been significant benefits over the past 10 years with sustained value tools, they have not been able to solve the whole problem in an integrated, systematic way, says Rob Howard.
Si bien han habido importantes beneficios en los últimos 10 años con las herramientas de valor sostenido, no han podido resolver el problema de manera integrada y sistemática, dice Rob Howard.
In den vergangenen zehn Jahren konnte aus nachhaltigen Tools zwar großer Nutzen gezogen werden, doch man konnte damit nicht das ganze Problem auf integrierte, systematische Weise lösen. Rob Howard erläutert die Hintergründe.
challenging times, doing more with less is essential to driving better results. To deliver sustained economic benefits, refiners have adopted advanced process control (APC) technologies to improve product yield, reduce energy consumption, increase capacity, improve product quality, deliver consistent process safety and reduce environmental emissions. Essentially, APC allows companies to do more, save more and make more. In the past decade, model-based
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predictive control techniques have become a pragmatic choice in the industrial world and especially the oil refining
he refining and petrochemical industry is reliant on improving return on assets and lowering operating costs to be competitive. In these
and petrochemical industries. Many companies have recently reported that advanced control delivers benefits ranging from 2 per cent to 6 per cent of increased profit by reducing process variability and allowing plants to be operated closer to their true constraints. APC has always played a key role in helping refineries, in particular, achieve commercial success. However, as the physical plant changes over time, APC models need to be maintained and updated or adapted or they no longer represent true plant behaviour. Whilst there have been significant benefits over the last ten years with sustained value tools they have not been able to solve the whole problem in an integrated, systematic way. Adaptive Process Control developed
by AspenTech is a breakthrough in technology for maintaining controllers, such as Aspen DMCplus, and it allows engineers to perform maintenance on the controller while it is still on- line and continuing to optimise the plant. Tere is a significant difference between the traditional approach to controller maintenance (sustained value) and Adaptive Process Control. With sustained value, revamping the controller was done as a project. Under Adaptive Process Control, however, the controller is modified over time in more of a continuous process. Tis update of the model occurs without the need to take the controller off-line and enables a company to reap the benefits of control and optimisation while the model is under maintenance. Model quality analysis, which continually runs and assesses the accuracy of the model, can detect when degradation of performance occurs. Tis
Fig. 1. To deliver sustained economic benefits, refiners have adopted advanced process control (APC) technologies to improve product yield, reduce energy consumption.
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