Plant Management
For Yokogawa, new solutions aimed at optimising process industry plant operations are a priority. These are provided as part of the company’s VigilantPlant Services suite that supports safe, stable and highly efficient plant operations. The technology underlying these solutions is Yokogawa’s newly developed Mirror Plant online simulator.
The simulator can visualise the internal state of a plant process and make near- term predictions on plant behaviour. This simulator operates in synchronisation with the plant control system and features the level of performance required in commercial plants.
Based on real-time manufacturing process information and using a proprietary function for adjusting model parameters, Mirror Plant precisely simulates the state of a plant. Using plant models, it visualises the current state of the plant, the state of the plant up to several hours in the future, and the state at plant locations where it is not possible to measure temperature or pressure. It displays these results on screen at a Centum VP integrated production control system operator terminal or at a standard PC. Mirror Plant has an alarm function to alert operators to potential problems.
The simulation models used in Mirror Plant are built based not on statistical data from plant operations, but on physical laws. Thus processes can be theoretically verified, and the simulator can be used for applications such as identifying problems in a process.
Meanwhile Finnish company VTT has completed a project with Japanese cement manufacturer Ube Industries to develop a simulation model that helps to identify the best operational practices needed to reduce both energy consumption and emissions.
The work was based on VTT’s existing modelling tool KilnSimu. This models the chemical reactions and phase changes in a rotary kiln, as well as their thermal and energy balances. With Ube Industries, the simulation was coupled with other modelling tools and modified to meet the company’s process parameters.
The customised tool predicted cement clinker crystal formation and composition. It also estimated the circulation of harmful sulphate and chlorine species both in the pre-calciner and in the rotary kiln. It also showed how to control the secondary air and fuel inlets to minimise the kiln’s energy consumption. l
C
Vessel designer reuses designs and reduces with Autodesk software
ameron Process Systems designs oil and water treatment
vessels, which can have more than 150 nozzle connections each. To speed up the design process the company recently made the move to digital prototyping with Autodesk Inventor. The software has enabled the company to reuse designs and reduce errors.
Originally, the many nozzle variations meant that the modelling process lasted three to four weeks. Hoping to expedite the design and drafting phase, Foucault examined the XML data generated by the COMPASS calculation software and realised the data needed to generate models was already in the application. With Autodesk Inventor
Engineer-to-Order, Cameron can now automatically create drawings that offer multiple views of a vessel, nozzle schedules and complete parts lists pulled from the company’s parts database. With Autodesk Inventor Engineer-to-Order, the office is saving about US$60,000/ year in avoiding errors in the nozzle schedules and parts lists. l
www.engineerlive.com 13
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39