INCOOP

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Project description: Integrated Process Unit Control and Plantwide Optimization

The INCOOP project is an RTD project carried out from 2000-2003 aiming at strongly increasing flexibility (e.g. fast and cost effective changeovers) and efficiency (towards the physical and chemical optima) by setting the first important steps towards the control and optimization technology of the future. Researchers from chemical process industries (Bayer, Shell International Chemicals, IPCOS Technology, MDC Technology) and academia (Eindhoven University of Technology, Delft University of Technology, RWTH Aachen, and Carnegie Mellon University) have participated in this EC-funded project. INCOOP aims at full integration and realization of the model based control and real time optimization in the process industry. Current control and optimization systems do not support the dynamic non-linear process behavior of the production plants. No adequate robust and efficient algorithms for control and optimization using complex dynamic process models exist. INCOOP is an innovative project in the way it contributes to reaching a fully integrated dynamic and non-linear process control and optimization system. Especially the interplay of modeling of processes and numerical methods used in optimization and control is a major focus of research. An integrated model-predictive controller in combination with dynamic real-time optimization strategies have been established and proven against case studies as an architecture within the INCOOP project.

Benefits achieved

Open standards such as OPC and CAPE-OPEN were selected as the technical foundation of the project. CAPE-OPEN was chosen as a technical solution for integrating process modeling tools which were developed by various participants before the project without their later integration in mind. Optimization packages (such as IPOPT from Carnegie Mellon University and Dyos from Process Systems Engineering/RWTH Aachen) were enabled to use CAPE-OPEN compliant models that were provided by gPROMS (PSE). CAPE-OPEN provided a set of agreed and proven interfaces to the project so that the effort to agree on a communication basis for the various tools was not necessary. Further, the use standardized interfaces makes the resulting architecture future-proof in the sense that new tools can be easily used within the resulting approach. The software developed was tested against a series of problems posed by the industrial partners of the project.