Damien Uduehi

Controller benchmarking algorithms: some technical issues

(1) Strategy and Planning Coordinator (West Africa), BG Group, Reading, UK, (2) Professor of Automotive Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Kingston University, London, UK, (3) Research Fellow, Department of Electronic and Electrical Engineering, University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, UK, (4) Siemens AG Power Generation, Muelheim an der Ruhr, Germany, (5) Siemens AG Power Generation, Muelheim an der Ruhr, Germany, (6) Manager, CESI SpA, B.U. Transmission & Distribution, Milan, Italy.

Financial benefits of advanced control. Benchmarking and optimization of a crude oil production platform

Advanced control and optimization techniques provide an effective technique for increasing productivity and reducing operational cost. Petrochemical processes provide good examples in demonstrating the applicability of advanced systems control for revenue optimization. This paper presents the results of an integrated process control and revenue optimization audit technique applied to an oil production platform to assess the potential benefits of advanced control systems.

Application of process control loop benchmarking to an oil production platform

A complex system usually comprises numerous loops that are controlled by local SISO controllers. The decision to retune or replace any one of these controllers should be based on an investigation as to whether a change will improve the performance. Such a procedure is referred to as benchmarking. With a benchmarking tool, the engineer can justify a proposed retuning of the controller, since it provides a measure for the quality of control achieved. In the paper, first, the basic theory on minimum variance control is presented. Then, the results that arise from this theory, and directly applicable to benchmarking, are given. Finally, application of the given ideas to an industrial example, namely a separation vessel in an oil platform, is described.

Economic auditing of control systems

In this chapter, a method for integrating the use of the benchmarking and optimisation algorithms with economic process control auditing is discussed. The focus of the methodology is to selectively target process control loops with economic importance for benchmarking and optimisation. The method is a step by step approach to prioritising control loops according to economic importance and then benchmarking and optimising the necessary loops. Section 2.2 discusses a framework for process control benchmarking at the different layers of the process hierarchy and reviews some of the properties and characteristics of performance assessment metrics at each layer. Section 2.3 discusses the motivation for integrating process control benchmarking and optimisation with process economic control auditing and provides an integrated control and process revenue and optimisation (ICPRO) framework as a template for conducting process control audits. In Section 2.4, the integrated control and process revenue and optimisation framework is used to evaluate an industrial case study example. The case study example involves three offshore oil production platforms. The results and recommendations from this industrial case study are presented. In Section 2.5, some of these results are used to optimise a sub-system on one of the oil production platforms. Conclusions are presented in Section 2.6.