Ad-Hoc Projects

Wide range of capabilities of our Self-tuning AI Platform are applicable to any Industry as it improves the performance of key process variables. Using this Technology, our seasoned engineers have designed bespoken control strategies in several installations in different industries as you can see below.

The outcomes of these projects have always been extremely successful, adding an Extra Mile to each industrial application Performance.

Those applications which were delivered in different customers and occasions become standardized Products, where the know-how of our engineers has been preconfigured in the control strategy, minimizing the time to commission the system and maximizing the positive outcomes of our patented Technology.

The Oil and Gas industry for both production operations and drilling activities offers a great potential for advanced control due to the variability of the product through life of field and the need to maximize production for investment returns. The challenges of remote operations in hostile areas makes greater demands than ever for process stability which also affects equipment reliability. While application of advanced control is still in its infancy, the projections for future operations is towards increasing remote control and support.

BG Group Case Study: Three phase separation process

BG Group in the UK contracted ADEX to establish the feasibility and potential improvements to be gained by applying Adaptive Predictive Control to offshore separation of oil, water and gas (three phase). The project covered a wide range of operating conditions from widely ranging flow conditions to problematic pumps and valves, all situations which could be encountered offshore. The results were highly successful and ADEX was found to perform considerably better than rival methods. The separation strategy was to have primary control over levels and pressure at a particular set point while the pressure set point itself was adjusted to maximise production; in other words, maximising production flow was a primary control objective.

The conclusion was that the enhanced control precision and process stability enabled production offshore to be increased by between 1% and 5%, representing a considerable increase in revenue at existing oil prices.

The paper and pulp industry has many fundamental control challenges converting a fibrous raw material into tightly specified end product.

It is a high consumer of energy and comprises many processes requiring precision to avoid wastage, emissions and improve production volumes and quality all of which make this a key industry for ADEX applications.

PAPRICAN & CANFOR Case Study: Control of a Bleach Plant in a Pulp Factory.

Application of adaptive predictive control to the bleach plant of the pulp factory of CANFOR Ltd. in Port Mellon in British Columbia, Canada. In this plant, pulp was fed into a mixing tower, where chlorine was added. Bleaching was produced as the result of two chemical reactions: a fast substitution followed by a slow oxidation. The first reaction was completed after a few minutes, while the second one took approximately one hour. The reaction rate was affected by the amount of lignin in the incoming pulp, as well as by the chlorine concentration, the wood species and the stock temperature. Thus the dynamics were complex and time-varying. Moreover, surges of black liquor carryover were frequent and very detrimental as they consumed a large amount of chlorine. This was therefore a difficult control problem in which there was a large economic incentive for good control.

In a global context where the level of nuclear safety and reliability needs to be raised while improving the economic competitiveness of nuclear power in an open and deregulated electricity market ADEX technology is the keystone that allows to meet these objectives. Optimized Adaptive Control Systems, due to their adaptive capability, can deal with uncertainty scenarios and unknown perturbations guaranteeing the plant’s operational stability and reliability even under extreme circumstances, while maintaining desired performance.

MYHRRA: Transmutation Accelarator

  • The standard deviation of the resonance frequency improves by 38.5% with ADEX Technology.
  • This implies a reduction in average power consumed for generating an RF field of 3.2% using the ADEX Technology.

FULL IEEE REPORT HERE.

Nuclear

The petrochemical industry, above all, is process intensive and the quality of the control applied at different stages has an enormous impact on process stability, production, efficiency, safety and emissions.

Efficient control is at the heart of plant reliability, useful life and safety.

Pemex Cadereyta refinery Case Study: Sulphur Recovery Process.

The project involved the optimization of 5 sulphur recovery plants (1, 3, 4, 5 and 6) by means of precise control of the H2S:SO2 ratio in the tail gas from the Claus process. Two acid gas streams: amine acid gas and ammonia acid gas, flow to two separate headers which subsequently feed the amine acid gas to all 5 sulphur recovery plants and the ammonia acid gas to 4 of the sulphur recovery plants (3, 4, 5, and 6). The acid gas streams flow from Hydro-desulphurisation plants 1 and 2, Catalytic plants 1 and 2 and one Hydro Diesel plant. In addition, streams from the sour water exhaust columns 5, 6, 7 and 8 commingle in the ammonia acid gas headers. From the headers, the acid gas streams are fed to the 5 sulphur recovery units which burn part of the H2S in the presence of air, supplied via a combination of blowers. The tail gas then goes through three sulphur condensation phases at the end of which a tail gas analyser measures the ratio of H2S:SO2 which must be kept under precise control for optimization to be accomplished.

H2S:SO2 ratios under ADEX control got improvements over conventional control as follows: Plant 1: 28.93%, Plant 3: 87.19%, Plant 4: 72.22%, Plant 5: 55.68%, Plant 6: 85.01%.

Petrochemical

The objective of the ADEX application to the walking beam furnaces was to stabilize the temperatures in different zones of the furnace in order that these would respond with more precision to the required temperature profiles. This kind of furnaces are difficult processes to control due fundamentally to the load changes and interactions between the various zones in the furnace and their energy consumption is considerable. The results obtained have validated ADEX technology for this type of application, key within the Metallurgical industry.

ARCELOR Steel Plant at Aviles CASE STUDY

Existing PID based control system in the Steel Plant of ARCELOR at Aviles (Spain) resulted in 60 ºC amplitude oscillations of the temperature around the set point even in absence of oscillations of the set point.

The Adaptive Predictive control system of ADEX installed, with 52 ADEX controllers integrated in two furnaces, was shown to be perfectly robust and capable of stabilizing the operation of the furnaces in the large number of different operating modes typical of such processes, while substantially reducing the continuous oscillations in temperature that are produced in the different areas of the furnaces under conventional control. These are due fundamentally to variations in the speed of the pass, and the different temperature objectives of the products as well as the various heating strategies to obtain the metallurgical requirements.

Metallurgical

Self-tuning capabilities of ADEX Technology are key in extremely dynamic environments found in Aeronautics. Changing weather conditions and decreasing weight of fuel load are variables which drastically affect the behaviour of any Airborne Vehicle.

AIRBUS MILITARY’s Atlante Case Study

An adaptive flight control system (Adaptive Self-Tuning Flight Control System, AST-FCS) based on ADEX adaptive predictive expert control methodology was applied in a simulation of the ATLANTE UAS (Unmanned Aircraft System) carried out by the Flight Dynamics and Control Laws Department of Airbus Military. This development corresponded to the first phase of a project to implement an AST-FCS in this UAV (Unmanned Airborne Vehicle).

Atlante is a heavy, tactical, long range, unmanned aircraft. It was used by the Spanish military to support operations such as Intelligence, Surveillance, Target acquisition, and Reconnaisance (ISTAR).

Using this simulation model, the UAS under AST-FCS control, was subjected to continuous, severe turbulence, significant measurement errors, and large dynamic changes to the actuators. Under these conditions, performance achieved levels of stability, robustness and overall precision as would be expected under ideal flight conditions. Under ideal flight conditions, the AST-FCS is capable of guiding the critical variables under control close to the values demanded with great precision and under various flight scenarios within the obvious limits of flight envelopes and physical possibility. The fundamental characteristic of the AST-FCS is its capacity for adaptation which removes the need for precise knowledge of the aircraft dynamics and copes with guaranteed stability and robustness to the operating conditions which are characterised by a high level of uncertainty.

Aeronautics