Balance-based real-time monitoring – a tool to improve safety and efficiency of batch and semi-batch processes


Balance-based real-time monitoring – a tool to improve safety and efficiency of batch and semi-batch processes

Kryk, H.; Hessel, G.

In the fine chemical and pharmaceutical industry, batch and semi-batch processes are mostly used to produce special chemicals in small amounts. The behaviour of such strongly exothermic processes in stirred tank reactors is characterised by instationarity, non-linearity and a large number of influences which may affect the process safety and efficiency as well. Especially in multi purpose plants, such complex processes are usually controlled by conventional process variables, such as temperatures, pressures, dosing rates etc., but without any knowledge of the crucial parameters of a chemical reaction, the concentration profiles of reactants, products and intermediates. Thus, even experienced operators have difficulties to distinguish allowable from undesired process deviations and to identify the cause of process trends.
Therefore, it is of vital importance to establish industrially applicable methods for an objective detection of the actual process state and for alerting the operators in case of undesired process deviations. To avoid the use of expensive and fragile on-line analytics, a real-time monitoring approach based on adaptive energy and mass balances was developed, and related monitoring systems were tested at pilot scale and industrial applications as well.
Especially, if such a real-time monitoring approach is used as an integral part of a batch information management system (BIMS), the additional data could contribute to the enhancement of the process knowledge as a basis for continuative process optimisation. The additional process information provided by real-time monitoring systems enables application of advanced control strategies up to the point of a safety-oriented fully automated control of complex exothermic batch and semi-batch processes.

  • Invited lecture (Conferences)
    9th International Conference and Exhibition on The Scale-Up of Chemical Processes, 15.-17.09.2008, Rome, Italy
  • Contribution to proceedings
    9th International Conference and Exhibition on The Scale-Up of Chemical Processes, 15.-17.09.2008, Rome, Italy
    Conference Proceedings, Scale-up of Chemical Processes

Permalink: https://www.hzdr.de/publications/Publ-11678
Publ.-Id: 11678