EUREKA PROJECT > 5356 CO2PERATE
- SUMMARY
- OUTLINE
- PARTICIPANTS
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THE NETHERLANDS
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BELGIUM
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BELGIUM
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THE NETHERLANDS
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Computational Optimisation of OPERational cost for Ammonia faciliTiEs
In CO2PERATE the partners intend to develop a real-time dynamic optimisation solution (Advanced Process Control software solution) with low implementation and maintenance costs enabling the online minimisation and control of the operational cost of an industrial ammonia production facility.
Status > ANNOUNCED - 24-Jun-2010 Technological Area Market Area Start Date > 01-Jan-2010 Duration > 36 Months Participating countries > THE NETHERLANDS, BELGIUM | Main contactIPCOS B.V.
Ir. Jeffrey Landlust > R&D Engineer Organisation type > SME |
Project Description
Annually, around 130 million metric tons of nitrogen-based fertilizers are produced worldwide, mostly consisting of anhydrous ammonia, nitric acid, ammonium nitrate and urea. Roughly 3.3% of the worldwide natural gas consumption is used during production of these fertilizers. Ammonia production is both the key process and the most energy intensive process in the nitrogen-based fertilizer industry. It is even the second largest energy consumer in the chemical industry. Energy costs are a substantial and increasing part of overall operational cost in ammonia production, due to ever-rising energy prices and more stringent environmental legislation. Reduction of the operational cost is an increasingly important objective for ammonia producers to maintain their competitiveness. This objective can be accomplished by new process designs, but long development times and high investment cost make these changes a long term option only. Advanced Process Control (APC) offers the opportunity to online control and optimises process operations by continuously driving the process to the best operating point given current market and operating conditions. APC requires no changes in the plant design, which lowers the threshold of introducing this technology in existing plants; it supports cost efficient retrofitting as well as implementation in newly built plants. Current Advanced Process Control technology is already successfully applied in ammonia for maximisation of plant capacity (throughput). However, it is not yet capable of reducing the operational cost of an ammonia facility, because of a lack of a quantitative model for the relation between production capacity, process conditions and operational cost. Besides this technological limitation, current APC technology is not yet economically attractive enough for reducing the operational cost, due to the large engineering effort required for both implementation and maintenance of the APC technology. In this research project (CO2PERATE - Computational Optimisation of OPERational cost for Ammonia faciliTiEs) the partners intend to develop and industrially validate a technology, which enables ammonia producers to efficiently minimise their operational costs. The cooperation is based on long term collaborations and a perfect match of technological know-how and market capabilities. IPCOS is market leader for Model Predictive Control (MPC) for the nitrogen-based fertilizer industry. YARA is worldwide leader in the production of ammonia. In order to succeed technically, simplified models of the relation between operational cost and process conditions for different operating regimes will be developed for an ammonia facility. An APC based solution will be used to online calculate, depending on the current market situation and process condition, the most optimal trade-off between production capacity, energy (utility) usage and consumption of feedstock materials subject to the process limitations. Since modelling is the major cost factor of an APC project, technology will be developed in order to make the envisaged solution economically attractive for the reduction of operational cost in an ammonia facility. The total implementation cost and the cost of ownership of an APC solution will be drastically reduced by: 1. A layered hybrid model approach in which existing physical and data-driven modelling techniques are combined. 2. Automated testing, monitoring & modelling technology based on closed-loop identification. 3. Data mining techniques that can explore massive historical data sets for interesting and consistent parts of data for dynamic process modelling.
Technological Development Envisaged
At this moment APC is only applied in ammonia for throughput maximisation. During periods of lower process throughput APC is switched off due to its inability to minimise operational cost. A quantitative, unambiguous economic cost criteria, relating to process conditions and the economical aspects of an ammonia facility, is namely not yet available. Currently, ammonia producers do not make use of the opportunity to minimise costs during periods of lower production rates. Nowadays, there exist two main domains of dynamic process modelling: physical process modelling and data-driven process modelling. Both approaches are not able to make current APC technology economically attractive enough for minimisation of operational cost of an ammonia facility. Therefore, a new innovative combined technology is proposed: a hybrid modelling technology. Until now, very little attention has been paid to the practical applicability of closed-loop identification methods for the identification of industrial processes. Data mining is a very popular research topic in the field of marketing and security, but none of the existing algorithms have been applied yet for analysis of historical data of chemical processes with the purpose of estimation of dynamic process models.
Main contactYara Sluiskil B.V. Mr. Henri M.R. Lambotte > Business Development & Energy Manager Organisation type > Large company |
Contribution to project
The contribution of YARA is the know-how of the ammonia process. With its knowledge YARA contributes to identify the areas where there is a potential for energy saving by using models that predict the plant performance. When these models are available YARA will use their knowledge to optimise the use of it by defining boundaries such that it does not harm the reliability of the ammonia plants. YARA SLUISKIL will furthermore contribute to the industrial validation of the solution enabling ammonia producers to online optimise the operational cost of their ammonia facility, by providing the ammonia plant "REF C" as a demonstration case
Expertise
YARA SLUISKIL is the largest production site within YARA and within Western Europe. About 600 employees produce 1.7 million tons of ammonia and 5.5 million tons of fertilizers and industrial products.
Main contactIPCOS N.V. Mr. Bert Pluymers > Consultant Organisation type > SME |
Contribution to project
The organisation will contribute to the development and industrial validation of the solution enabling ammonia producers to online optimise the operational cost of their ammonia facility. Research will focus on the development of simple models (hybrid models) suitable for implementation in a Model Predictive Controller and an optimisation strategy to reduce operational costs in an ammonia facility. With respect to the technology aiming at reduction of the project cost of an APC application IPCOS N.V. will perform research into data mining techniques. Developments will focus on offline techniques for exploration of massive historical databases of process measurements for useful information for dynamic process modelling for an APC application.
Expertise
IPCOS N.V. has specific expertise in the field of PID tuning, historical data based inferential sensors (soft-sensors), non-linear dynamic optimisation and approximate physical modelling for batch reactors. The key application markets are the nitrogen-based fertilizer industry and chemical batch industry. Extensive research and development activities in the past resulted into the following industrially applicable methods and products: INCA PID Tuner, INCA Sensor, PathFinder, INCA for BATCH. With INCA for BATCH, IPCOS is currently the only provider worldwide of an APC solution for chemical batch reactors and multi-phase reactors, enabling end-users to shorten batch cycle time and to reduce batch variability. In a past research project, called BATCH (IWT) IPCOS N.V. has already been able to apply a hybrid modelling technique for dynamic modelling of a simple unit operation. The BATCH project initiated the ideas as set out in this project proposal for the hybrid modelling approach for a much more complex setting - an entire ammonia factory. IPCOS has a broad experience in market introduction of new technology, as it has been investing in technology development and commercialisation since the company started. Examples are e.g. transition control of polymer reactors and APC for batch reactors.
Main contactYara Belgium S.A. Mr. Danny Franceus > Head of Process Department Organisation type > Large company |
Contribution to project
The contribution of the YARA Project Office (part of YARA Brussels) is the know-how of the ammonia process and the experience in energy reduction concepts and projects. YARA will be extensively involved in the final industrial validation of all technology to be developed in this R&D project to guarantee the development of industrially applicable (useful) tools.
Expertise
Within the YARA Project Office detailed state-of-the-art knowledge of the operation of industrial ammonia production processes is available. YARA also has extensive operational experience with an MPC system for maximisation of production, both at the local Sluiskil site and on the engineering level in the YARA Project Office. Besides this, the YARA Project Office also has lots of experience in energy reduction concepts and projects. The YARA Project Office has engineered and executed several revamps of ammonia plants, significantly reducing the energy consumption by more than 10%.
Main contactIPCOS B.V.
Ir. Jeffrey Landlust > R&D Engineer Organisation type > SME |
Contribution to project
The organisation will contribute to the development and industrial validation of the solution enabling ammonia producers online to optimise the operational cost of their ammonia facility. Research will focus on the development of simple models (hybrid models) suitable for implementation in a Model Predictive Controller and an optimisation strategy to reduce operational costs in an ammonia facility. With respect to the technology aiming at reduction of the project cost of an APC application, IPCOS B.V. will perform research into closed-loop identification techniques. Developments will focus on techniques supporting automatic testing, monitoring and modelling of the ammonia process.
Expertise
IPCOS B.V. has a long history in the research and development of Model Predictive Control (MPC), model identification and its application in the process industry. The research and development activities resulted in industrially applicable methods and products: IPCOS Novel Control Architecture (INCA - MPC) and INCA for Glass. The key markets for IPCOS B.V. are the glass and nitrogen-based fertilizer industry. IPCOS B.V. has extensive knowledge about the operation of ammonia production plants; several people working already for more than 10 years in the nitrogen-based fertilizer industry. IPCOS has a framework agreement with YARA, which reconfirms YARA's strategic decision to select IPCOS as its preferred supplier of Advanced Process Control solutions at YARA plants worldwide. In addition to the contract with YARA, IPCOS has partner relationships with UHDE, a major ammonia production process licensor. Furthermore, IPCOS collaborates with Haldor Topsoe (ammonia process licensor), Stamicarbon (urea process licensor) and Johnson Matthey (catalyst supplier for ammonia and methanol production processes). Within the current research projects (SINC-PRO, CryPTO) IPCOS has already built up some experience with the hybrid modelling approach for a single unit operation (batch crystallisers). However, this approach has never been applied on a full plant scale, which is intended in this research project for the complete ammonia facility. IPCOS has a broad experience in market introduction of new technology, as it has been investing in technology development and commercialisation since the company start. Examples are e.g. transition control of polymer reactors, efficient modelling of glass furnaces and APC for batch reactors.