A System for Advanced Performance Monitoring: Application to Complex Plants of the Chemical Industry

This paper illustrates the results of the off-line application of an advanced performance monitoring system to complex plants of the chemical industry. The system analyses data recorded by the DCS during routine operations and issues automatic verdicts about the performance of the basic control loops. Indications of causes of low performance (controller tuning, valves, disturbances) and different strategies to adopt (retuning, valve maintenance, upstream actions) are also given. The overall system architecture is firstly illustrated, with characteristics of the modules which accomplish different tasks of performance analysis, verdicts emission and operator support. A synthesis of the main techniques and algorithms adopted in the system is also given, together with differences among different versions of the system, according to available information on the plant. Examples of field results are then presented, with illustration of loops performance assessment and actions suggested by the monitoring system.