Faster Control Actions
Changes in independent variables are captured by dynamic coordination every few minutes, enabling faster optimal control actions and greater benefits, yielding higher unit margins and CO2 reductions.
Companies operating in the refining, petrochemical, and chemical industries are focused on reducing the amount of CO2 they release into the atmosphere. To meet these stringent requirements, real-time process optimization is more frequently becoming a requirement in today’s environment.
RT-OP is a dynamic, real-time optimization solution that optimizes assets e.g. LNG plants, entire plants e.g. olefins, or circuits within a refinery/petrochemical/chemical plant, in minutes to ensure a continuous response to market signals and disturbances, such as product price changes, feed changes. KBC’s real-time optimization solution combines Petro-SIM® and Advanced Control and Estimation (PACE) APC to form a tightly integrated system to optimize plants 24/7.
It's long been a dream of the refining, petrochemical, and chemical industries to have one model that could be used for many purposes (e.g. design, operation, training, and optimization). The problem was each of these tasks was performed by a different type of model in a different software package. This elusive dream was not realized – until now.
While not new, real-time optimization has been around for over forty years, it is under-utilized in the hydrocarbon industry. Why is this? Traditional solutions were hard to implement and, more importantly, difficult to sustain over the long term. It required specialists, who were often a scarce resource, to develop and maintain these systems. The first-principle models used for these systems were not the same ones the plant engineers used to do their other everyday tasks.
RT-OP uses the same modeling software engineers use every day to do things such as monitor the plant, keep the LP up to date and do design studies. The same engineers that do these tasks are the same ones that maintain the real-time optimization system – no more specialists in scarce supply.