APC checks costs
21 Sep 2010
Unipetrol is achieving energy savings of €2m/year following the implementation of an advanced process control (APC) system from AspenTech at a steam cracker in its ethylene production plant at Litvinov in the Czech Republic.
The Czech company is using the APC to compare actual data from its plant to targets created using a model, on a daily basis. This, said AspenTech, allows the company to pinpoint how the plant is performing and adjust the set points so that they can run the facility closer to constraints.
At Unipetrol, the initial driver for implementing APC was throughput maximisation. However, with the plant now running at 70-80% of capacity, the focus has shifted to energy savings and energy management.
The APC ensures that operators have enhanced control over the operation of the furnaces; freeing up time to focus on other key strategic tasks within the plant and by lowering overall fuel consumption, reports Miroslav Malecky, senior process engineer responsible for APC and process modelling at Unipetrol.
“We were able to receive a return on our initial investment inside six months,” said Malecky. “And we estimate that using APC to reduce the plant’s fuel consumption has allowed us to make energy savings of around €2 million a year.”
