A pragmatic approach for performance assessment of advanced process control

Methods for assessing the performance of an installed controller were studied in literature; however, assessing the benefits of an advanced controller before installation is often unstandardized. To justify the investment on automation, it is vital to provide tangible benefits of advanced control solutions. This paper presents a method for estimating benefits of advanced process control prior to installation. In a first step, plant models including disturbance models are identified using time varying parameter estimation. In a second step, the disturbance models are varied to generate a multitude of scenarios. In a third step, closed loop simulations are used to assess the performance of the proposed controller. The simulation results are then mapped to production target and cost to generate tangible benefits of the advanced process control technique. The proposed method is applied to an industrial cement production process to illustrate its potential. Results using real plant data for a calciner section of the clinker production process are presented which illustrates key features of the proposed approach.