Page 42 - Industrial Plant 2015

• product quality stabilization (35% reduction in
product quality standard deviation).
The following figure shows the increase in the specific
productivity brought by APC during the pre-
commissioning.
The chart shows that, following APC system turn on
and its increase in HP turbine load, the computed
steam/methane ratio increases by an average of 2%
with a consequent reduction in the natural gas
purchase.
The figure shows set point difference between HP and
MP turbines, in blue, and the produced steam/natural
gas flow ratio, in green. As the APC switches on, moves
load from MP turbine toward the HP turbine, finally
reaching the maximum allowed opening for the HP
turbine actuator, indicated with the dotted red points.
Apart from the steam use fluctuations, linked to sugar
ovens cycles, the overall trend is an increase in the
specific production as load on the turbines is
re-balanced by the APC system.
Riccardo Martini
Riccardo is Advanced Process Control Operations
Manager for ABB Italy, Oil Gas & Petrochemical
Business Unit. He graduated in Electrical Engineering at December 2009 he acted as Product Manager for the
Genoa University in 1994.
Riccardo has over 15 years experience in Advanced
Process Control and Process Optimization, covering a
different process units and different markets, from
Fabio Podestà
Fabio joined ABB in 2001 as software engineer; over
the years has worked in the area of Scada software
development and operations. Later on he moved to
process management, acting as Lead Engineer for
Alarm Management & Optimization.
Michele Strepparola
Michele is a Service Sales Manager for ABB Italy, Pulp
& Paper, Metal, Chemical and Pharma Business Unit.
He graduated in 1997 in Electronic (Optoelectronic)
Engineering at Milan Politecnico.
The experience of Michele started in 1999 in service for System) is the challenge of the last years.
consumer electronics focusing on customer care and
Industrial Plants - May 2015
40
References
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flight_envelope_
protection, Wikipedia
[2] Bonavita N., Martini R. Matsko, T., “Improvement in
the Performance of Online Control Applications via
Enhanced Modeling Techniques”, Proc. of ERTC
Computing 2003, Milan, Italy
[3] Van Overschee p., DeMoor b. “Subspace
Identification for Linear Systems: Theory-
Implementation-Applications”, Kluwer Academic
Publishers, 1996
[4] Michael Lundh, Molander Mats, “State Space
Models in Model Predictive Control”, ABB White Paper
[5] G. Valadez and D. Sandberg, Alcoa, P. Immonen
and T. Matsko, ABB, “Coordinated Control and
Optimization of a Complex Industrial Power Plant”,
Power Engineering, November 2008
[6] M. Abela, D. Giannobile, E. Majuri, R. Martini, F.
Podestà, C. Bongiorno, “The unstoppable advance –
APC applied to an IGCC combined cycle”, Hydrocarbon
Engineering, April 2013.
Refining to Petrochem, from Gasification to Gasification
to Power Generation. From November 2005 to
ABB Multivariable Process Controller software Optimize
IT Predict & Control. He is author or co-author of more
than 10 papers published on technical magazines or
presented at international conferences.
In 2011 he joined the APC & Process Optimization
group. Since then he has focused mainly on ABB APC
applications and worked, as application specialist, on
several complex projects.
then moved to industry service for ABB in 2008. Focus
of his Activities are Proactive, customer oriented and
advanced services. Strong specialization on revamping
of old ABB and third party DCS (Distributed Control