Latest news and developments at APC Performance, LLC:
- Recent publications by APC Performance:
- Advanced Process Control: Challenges and opportunities remain (coming 2019)
- Advanced Process Control Metrics: Closing the loop on APC performance, Hydrocarbon Processing, Nov. 2018
- Tuning tips for the busy control engineer, Control Engineering, Oct. 2018
- The big story behind auto-tuning, Control Engineering, Aug. 2018
- ControlTalk interview with industry expert Greg McMillan, ControlGlobal, Oct. 2017
- The lost art of proportional band (and the accidental art of performance monitoring), Hydrocarbon Processing, July 2017
- Read the "one slide" series on Linked-In:
- RPC in one slide
- XMC in one slide (coming soon)
- RTO in one slide
- Dynamic deadtime control with RPC
- APC 2.0: The Next-Generation Advanced Control Paradigm
- APC 2.0: The Next Generation of Advanced Process Control, on HydrocarbonProcessing.com
- Read and provide feedback on APC 2.0 on APCperformance.com
- Read the ARC Advisory Group ARCView market analysis
- “Our hydrotreater XMC application provided improved sulfur control, increased product value through optimized aromatic saturation, and reduced operator loading, which freed up time for other console tasks and priorities... read more testimonials
- Rate-Predictive Control Performance and Stability Analysis Report
by University of Wyoming - XMC® and RPC® earn US Patent!
- RPC® Rate-Predictive Control
- Industry's only inherently adaptive process control algorithm
- The most important development since Ziegler-Nichols
- XMC® Model-less Multivariable Controller
- Industry's only model-less multivariable controller
- The most important development in decades
- A fraction of the cost and maintenance, all of the performance
ONLINE CONSULTING: Reliability and safety are the main challenges facing the process industries today, and process automation is one of the most effective solutions. Online consulting complements in-house resources, helps bridge a skill shortage at many sites, and makes process automation and control a regular contributor to continuous operational improvement. Learn more.
INFERENTIAL CONTROL (SOFT SENSORS): Inferential control is the most profitable part of multivariable control (MPC). But inferentials can also be implemented without MPC, capturing the benefits of inferentials without the cost, difficulties and delay of MPC. Learn more.
DISTILLATION CONTROL: Distillation accounts for up to half of an oil refinery's total energy bill. Wherever reflux or reboiler control is not in cascade mode, which is surprisingly common, 5-10% of this energy can be saved, in addition to product quality improvement. Learn more.
HYDROCRACKER CONTROL: Hydrocrackers are one of oil refining's most demanding automation challenges at all levels -- safety systems, regulatory control and advanced control. But most hydrocrackers are under-automated, lacking basic excursion controls, depressure prevention measures, and effective advanced controls. Learn more.
CRUDE UNIT CONTROL: Crude units are a textbook MPC application, but common control challenges often remain unsolved, such as reliable inferentials, pump-around optimization, pressure control, and stripper levels. Learn more.
FIRED HEATER CONTROL: Modern oil refineries and petrochemical plants have dozens of fired heaters, making reliable heater controls and safety systems fundamental to reliability and energy efficiency. Yet many heaters lack reliable and effective air, draft and fuel gas controls. Learn more.
MPC PERFORMANCE AUDITS: Industry has installed nearly a thousand MPC controllers, but the majority have fallen below performance and profit expectations. Performance audits provide a sound basis to capture the benefits of high-performance base layer control, reliable inferentials, and profitable multivariable control going forward. Learn more.
LOOP-TUNING SURVEYS: Learn why loop tuning and multivariable control modeling are both more like ongoing maintenance tasks than one-time engineering tasks. (Hint: They share a common root cause!). Learn more.
