SimSci assists online monitoring in refining, chemical, gas industries

Brea, Calif. - Simulation Sciences (SimSci), a division Invensys plc (London, U.K.), released Mar. 12 its new Automated Rigorous Performance Monitoring (ARPM) software, an online plant performance monitoring solution for refining, chemical and gas processing industries.

By Control Engineering Staff March 12, 2002

Brea, Calif. – Simulation Sciences (SimSci), a division Invensys plc (London, U.K.), released Mar. 12 its new Automated Rigorous Performance Monitoring (ARPM) software, an online plant performance monitoring solution for refining, chemical and gas processing industries. ARPM is designed to enable plant engineers and management to automatically access raw, real-time plant data, and use rigorous simulation models to extract validated process and equipment performance information.

“One of the most pressing demands in the process industry is to understand performance of operating assets, and, more specifically, to ask questions regarding causes of performance degradation,” says Ken Brown, SimSci-Esscor’s vp and gm. “ARPM is a new on-line diagnostic and decision support tool designed to answer such questions and significantly improve plant performance.”

SimSci states that ARPM is the only commercially available performance monitoring solution that integrates rigorous simulation, data reconciliation, gross error detection and performance monitoring into one user environment. Also, ARPM enables users to directly access process data, and provides a scheduling system for automation of performance monitoring tasks.

ARPM is based on SimSci’s Rigorous Online Modeling with equation-based optimization (RO-Meo) technology, and is a component of Sim Sci’s Online Performance Suite, which delivers advanced process control (APC), performance monitoring and online optimization solutions to help users obtain peak performance from their operating units.

ARPM uses plant data and simulation models to extract validated process and equipment performance information, providing timely insight into the true cause of performance degradation. It uses rigorous, first principles modeling to pinpoint underperforming or malfunctioning equipment. This allows users to anticipate maintenance needs; diagnose root causes of process performance degradation; monitor equipment performance relative to design; determine degradation’s economic impact; identify faulty instrumentation and improve unit mass balance closure; and track actual unit performance against plan to understand deviations.

Control Engineering Daily News DeskJim Montague, news editor jmontague@cahners.com