Optimising operation through advanced process control

Process plants often don’t perform as well as their operators would hope. Plant functions that depend on human operation can lead to unreliability, which in turn leads to variations in product quality, high energy costs and inconsistent volumes of materials processed through the plant; all of these can cause operations to fail to run to their actual limit. To improve quality, operators need to consider changing their plant-control strategies.

Instead of operators manually adjusting control units for specific variables in the plant, advanced systems provide models that automate regulatory and constraint control, as well as delivering process optimisation.

Advanced process control (APC) is a general term used to describe different types of process control tools and methodologies frequently used for solving multivariable control or discrete control problems. It helps to improve the operation of production processes, resulting in the continuous management and optimisation of complex process interactions. A dynamic, multivariable interaction model is designed with empirical control software to predict the future path of the process, compare the information with the operating constraints and implement an efficient plan to the target set by the company. The resulting benefits of APC are maximum profits, increased capacity and improved operational performance.