Plants Performance Monitoring

Does the change impact plant-monitoring activities (plant performance monitoring, analyzing potential equipment failures, process monitoring by panels, etc.)... 

A change in approach is clearly necessary in order that the full benefit of integrated plant condition management and control can be recognized and exploited. Improved control and enhanced performance monitoring will enable shutdown intervals to be extended without increasing the risk of premature or unexpected failure. In turn, this will increase the confidence of operations, inspection and management personnel in the effectiveness of unified plant administration. 

Total performance monitoring on or off line is important for the plant engineers to achieve their goals of ... 

Boyce, M.P., Performance Monitoring of Large Combined Cycle Power Plants, Proceedings of the ASME 1999 International Joint Power Generation Conference, San Francisco, California. Vol. 2, pp. 183-190, July 1999. 

Since the advent of efficient and robust simulation and optimization solution engines" and flowsheeting software packages that allow for relatively easy configuration of complex models, numerous integrated, high fidelity, and multiscale process model applications have been deployed in industrial plants to monitor performance and to determine and capture improvements in operating profit. 

An interesting example of this large and complex project is the one regarding thermal and thermo-electrical plants. This project, through constant improvements of the design, the materials, the water chemistry and the monitoring systems, induces a continuing improvement of the plant performances. 

Some data from plant operation, such as the number of trips or the numbers and values of variations in temperature and power, may be obtained not by the usual methods of surveillance such as monitoring, measuring and testing, but directly from the records of the plant operating history. This Safety Guide does not deal with such items however, it is recognized that the collection and evaluation of these data are of fundamental importance for the assessment of plant performance and residual lifetime. 

Once all the system components have been fine-tuned, the plant is ready for operating in its normal service mode. In modem integrated membrane plants, systems operation has become less dependent on the operator and more dependent on the automatic systems in place. However, human intervention is required during start-up. During normal operation, operators are required for starting the systems, for performance monitoring and... 

With regard to normal and abnormal states of hazardous plant several monitoring and control loops may be distinguished as illustrated in Fig. 3. In normal plant states and some disturbances the operator is supervising the technological process because the control is performed automatically. In case of malfunctions and abnormal states the operator should be informed about current situation by the alarm system. The role of operator in hazardous state of the plant (dashed line), in order to prevent a serious accident, can be decomposed into several general task illustrated on Fig. 4 (Hollnagel 2005). 

Few operators monitor separately the energy consumption of the machines and the energy used in space heating and lighting. Conseqnently, the data of Table 3.3 refer to plant performance rather than machine performance. 

A Comprehensive Technique for MPC Performance Monitoring The essential step in the LQG benchmark is the calculation of various control laws for different values of A and prediction (P) and control (M) horizons (P = M). This is a case study for a special type of MPC (unconstrained, no feedforward) and a special parameter set (M = P) to find the optimal value of the cost function and an optimal controller parameter set. Using the same information (plant and disturbance model, covariance matrices of noise and disturbances), studies can be conducted for any type of MPC and the influence of any parameter can be examined. These studies... 

The Process Computer System provides performance monitoring and control, and power generator control subsystem functions to provide efficient plant operation and automation. 

Most chemical plant personnel and especially process safely practitioners are aware of and use the Responsible Care Process Safety Codes. This code is a performance monitoring and reporting code for individual companies and the entire chemical business. 

The importance of corrosion effects in balance of plant (BOP) components in nuclear plants increased dramatically in the 1980s. BOP problems such as MIC, pitting, and underdeposit corrosion had a dramatic effect on plant performance. Methods for monitoring and for selecting materials for resistance to pitting and crevice corrosion exist. Additional standard methods for MIC testing are under development [10]. 

In general, all concepts could benefit from remote monitoring of plant performance with rapid response specialty maintenance crew support provided from centralized multi-plant support... 

Many data historians included a compression algorithm to reduce the storage requirement. When later used to recover the original data some distortion will occur. While this is not noticeable in most applications, such as process performance monitoring and accounting, it can affect the apparent process dynamics. Any compression should therefore be disabled prior to the plant tests. 

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