Process industry

 

Hierarchical Control

The analysis of a production plant leads to split down the system into hierarchical levels ranked from 0 to 3, each level receiving its specifications from the upper level. Level zero controllers are mainly flow rate control loops (FRCs), level 1 (simple or cascaded) controls process variables such as temperatures, concentrations, qualities. Sherpa acts mainly at that level. The static optimization is at level 2 and level 3 corresponds to production planning.
 

Model Predictive Control

The methodology and tools for Model Predictive Control are applied to a wide range of industrial sectors : oil, chemistry, food, steel industry, etc.
 

SHERPA- PROCESS CONTROL applies predictive control

and exploits its industrial experience for solving problems corresponding to some of the following topics :
  • decrease standard deviation of qualities, temperatures, ...
  • decrease actuators movements
  • maximize the feed rate with respect of the constraints
  • minimize energy consumption
  • satisfies production constraints (material resistance, pollution, ...) 
 
The Process Control team performed number of predictive control in the world to a wide range of industrial sectors.
 

The applications in Process industry follow part or all of the tasks necessary for optimizing the process handling :
  • analysis of the requirements
  • functional analysis
  • modelling (more or less based of first principles)
  • simulation
  • control design
  • integration - validation
  • start-up on site
  • training
  • maintenance
Added to the usual target sectors (above), applications are performed in glass industry, utilities, bio-chemicals, etc.