Interoperability of Process Simulation Software

Interoperability of Process Simulation Software — This paper discusses the impact of software interoperability in strengthening the role of industrial and academic Computer Aided Process Engineering (CAPE). The viewpoint is predominantly industrial and focused on the activity of process simulation. The paper outlines the environment within which CAPE now operates and discusses the meaning of interoperability in this context. It then looks at the benefits that interoperability can bring and reviews the current status of the market place. The paper goes on to discuss the implications of these new capabilities for organisations and individuals and concludes with a look at some of the ways in which interoperability could be used in the future. Software Interoperability for Petroleum Applications Interopérabilité logicielle : les applications dans l’industrie pétrolière D o s s i e r Oil & Gas Science and Technology – Rev. IFP, Vol. 60 (2005), No. 4 1 OVERALL CONTEXT OF SIMULATION IN PROCESS ENGINEERING It has been said that the ability to learn faster than your competitors is an organisation’s only sustainable competitive advantage. Quality, service, technology, price, marketing, and patents are certainly required, but the ability to adapt more quickly than the competition is what sets an organisation apart. The rate at which an organisation can implement its next step forward will determine how long it can sustain any given advantage. Computer Aided Process Engineering (CAPE) has a significant role in allowing companies to rapidly develop and implement improvements in the design and operation of manufacturing plants. The key business drivers in today’s competitive climate and, more specifically, for the use of CAPE are: – Mergers, acquisitions, and divestitures that have resulted in a rapidly changing mix of competitors intensely competing for market share. – The combined effect of rapid change and competitive pressures, which means an increased emphasis on capital efficiency and minimum total cost of ownership (minimised working capital, asset base, and maintenance budgets). – Business changes that have the effect of reducing continuity in the technical community, with people moving between business units/technology areas or between companies. CAPE practitioners become less frequent users of CAPE tools, resulting in a reduction of their specific CAPE expertise. – The use of engineering contractors increases the risk that project objectives might not be translated into desired individual behaviours. – Increasingly strict environmental and health and safety performance legislation. Before going any further, we need to define some terms. We are using the term CAPE to cover all of the activities in which computers are used to assist in the design and operation of processes. Process simulation is often taken to mean that aspect of CAPE in which process models are used to make predictions about the performance of process plants or collections of plants. This implies that process modelling is the building of the process models used for simulation. However, simulation and modelling are often used interchangeably. In the interests of brevity, we will therefore use the terms simulation or process simulation to encompass the activities of creating process modelling components, combining them to represent an industrial process and using the resulting overall model to study some aspect of the performance of the process. 2 BUSINESS CASE FOR INTEROPERABILITY In this environment, it is clear that process engineers will place heavy demands on CAPE software capabilities, as they strive to deliver the necessary quality and speed of response. At the heart of this endeavour is usually the need for a highfidelity process model to enable meaningful process simulations to be carried out. The range of technical capability needed for a given process simulation is often so great that no single provider is likely to deliver best-in-class in every area. This requires the use of Process Modelling Components (PMCs) from multiple sources in the chosen Process Modelling Environment (PME). This situation makes complete interoperability a requirement for taking full advantage of the possibilities of CAPE. Here, complete interoperability is the ability of a PMC to run as if it were an integral component within any PME. It provides full “plug and play” operation, so that there is no longer any need for a different version of a PMC for each PME, or for the interface to be revised each time a new version of the PME is issued. From this point on, when we use the word interoperability, we mean complete interoperability as described above. To achieve interoperability, PMC and PME providers must adhere to a single, widely agreed interface standard. Use of such a standard can: – Reduce total effort required through the whole software cycle creation, maintenance, and updates. – Enhance the relationship between universities and industry by facilitating the transfer of simulation technology between them. – Stimulate universities, software developers, equipment vendors, etc., to provide an increasingly diverse mix of simulation components. – Improve ease of use. – Give users access to specific equipment vendor process models for perhaps detailed design (if vendor is preselected) and certainly for operations, training, control, and optimisation. – Give users access to best-in-class simulation components for all CAPE activities. – Allow each component provider (academic, software vendor, equipment supplier, etc.) to focus on their own expertise, which promotes the production of best-in-class software components. There are many examples of environments and components where interoperability is applicable. The traditional process simulator is the obvious PME, but CAPE covers the entire process engineering arena, not just process simulation. Furthermore, the end users of CAPE tools extend beyond the process engineers themselves into other technical disciplines (e.g. chemists). In this broader context, possible PMEs include: – Custom applications built using, for example, a spreadsheet. Possible PMCs that would be required in this environment would be: • physical property systems; 608 PS Banks et al. / Interoperability of Process Simulation Software • single detailed unit operations. An example of this could be a reactor model for use by chemists in design of experiments and data analysis. – Any process design application that requires access to physical properties. Currently such properties are either provided by the user in the form of simple tabular data or through the application’s own, and perhaps limited, proprietary physical property system. However, it would be much better if all such applications could use the standard physical property system in use within the company. A specific, sophisticated example of this would be the modelling of electrolyte systems. Note that a single application may be either a PME or a PMC depending on the usage and context. For example, a stand-alone unit operation application may require the use of plug-in physical properties, in which case it acts as a PME. If the same application is used as a unit operation in a process simulator, then it acts as a PMC. 3 APPLICATIONS FOR INTEROPERABILITY There are many published examples [1-10] that demonstrate that the appropriate application of CAPE tools can deliver substantial benefits. These examples cover a wide range of CAPE tools applied across the process industries. However, there are many benefits that can be obtained through the application of CAPE that currently are not routinely captured. Looking at the process plant life cycle, from process concept through to operations and beyond, shows where such benefits can be obtained and how interoperability can contribute. 3.1 Design and Revamp It is possible to deliver process designs that are more capital efficient, i.e. that require less capital, or use the same capital more effectively. The value of process simulation tools here is in: – enabling leaner and more agile project teams to use concurrent engineering, in place of the traditional sequential design process; – rapid and efficient flow sheet optimisation. This can be done through formal or informal process synthesis, optimisation, and dynamic simulation. These techniques are not all routinely used, but offer significant potential to deliver process designs which are safe to operate, cost effective, and easy to control. The use of interoperable software components means that the models needed for these activities could be assembled quickly from components in the market place, without the need for custom software. Interoperability at the design stage can also mean that process synthesis, optimisation, and steady-state and dynamic simulation are less likely to be stand-alone exercises, but rather integrated with each other and the design process. This approach offers significant benefits: – An integrated approach to assessing the operational impact of process constraints against the cost of removing them by equipment substitution. – A framework within which to assess the robustness of the design in the face of uncertainty in the basic design parameters and assumptions. – Integration of the process and control system design, enabling the design to be produced faster and with greater assurance that the process and control schemes are optimised. – The ability to prospectively examine the dynamic behaviour of the plant and proposed control scheme, thus ensuring the process will operate as intended and is controllable. – Process designs that minimise impact on the environment. This can be achieved through the reduction in energy usage, the minimisation of emissions, and the production of designs that can cope with upset conditions in the most environmentally friendly way. This approach is already being trialled in BP, with synthesis, simulation and optimisation systems sharing models in the exploration and production area.