Built-in tools: Benchmarking process operations in real time

-- Control Engineering, 5/6/2008

"ProcessApex is the next-generation interface to true process understanding,” says George Buckbee, vice president of product development at ExperTune. Unlike older-generation tools, ProcessApex does not require an engineer to spend a lot of time developing specific equations. Equations, models, and tools are built in."

For fired heaters, it benchmarks and tracks efficiency, excess oxygen, and potential fuel savings and can help to manage excess oxygen, reduce excess air flow, and deliver higher thermal efficiencies.

For heat exchangers, ProcessApex identifies bottlenecks and pinpoints opportunities by tracking heat duty, heat transfer coefficients, and approach temperatures. It benchmarks operation between similar heat exchangers, and identifies excess capacity, so that users can optimize more than a single heat exchanger.

For dryers, efficiency is tracked, plus the percentage of excess capacity, and energy usage per ton. Diagnostics include recommendations of targets, identification of limitations, and methods for improvement. Benchmarking tools drive each dryer to best performance levels.

ProcessApex runs on a server so that results are available to employees on the corporate office LAN via a browser interface. No special client software is required. Through tight integration with PlantTriage, detailed drill-down analysis is performed directly from the Web browser.

Also read Product Research on Loop Optimization Software. 

– Control Engineering News Desk

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