December - 20198 MANUFACTURING TECHNOLOGY INSIGHTSIN MY OPINIONEnergy Modeling Through Advanced Operational Analytics - A Green Lever In Operational ExcellenceBy James Martin, Global Operational Excellence Manager, AllnexAdvanced Operational Analytics make it simpler for specialty chemical companies to quickly and continuously understand, assess and act on the noisy, consumption patterns of energy. The increased understanding and timeliness of assessments can lead to significant reductions in energy consumption. Energy reduction is an increasingly critical lever in operational excellence because it delivers desirable impacts to both the environment and the bottom line. Effective energy reduction programs benefit from using a working energy model. A specialty chemical batch operation may have thousands of instruments, each generating data at its own pace using its own sampling algorithms. Operational analytics packages can easily line up the data on the same time axis and determine the various relationships between the points. Such a seemingly simple action had been historically complex and a discouraging activity. The discovered relationships are defined by energy models which can be part of an effective low to no capital energy reduction program that consistently delivers results. The steps to successfully building and running such a program are outlined below.1. Develop energy models, which predict energy consumption using utility instrument data and process instrument data generated by the control systems. Development of multi-variate models is quite simple with new operational analytical tools.2. Look for areas where the model performs poorly. Such areas normally indicate a missed modeling instrument, poor controller performance or a gap in standardizing operating procedures. In the steam model example, the variation increase in one weekend over another looked strange. The investigation revealed that poor control tuning was wasting significant amounts of energy.3. Look for the model parameters that are not statistically significant but should be, or have values that do not follow the laws of thermodynamics. For example, The parameters in the steam model in graph 1 indicated that one of the steam jet valves had no impact on overall steam demand. The valve was tested and was not closing properly leading to significant waste. Another parameter in the model was the high intercept, which shows a higher than expected fixed energy load.4. Update the model after resolving the initial findings and engage operations with routine daily reviews of model deviations. Only statistically significant deviations are to be discussed and investigated. Investigations will lead to improved models or improved operations. Such discussion can lead to failed steam traps and other equipment faults.
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