Instrumentation Network Design for Solids Processes

Abstract

Proper plant control and operation has to be based on measurements of process data at different locations within the process. The design of the instrumentation network is therefore an important step in the design phase of a given process. An advanced instrumentation network design should not only allow process control on a minimum data basis but should enable the plant operator to gain more insights into the functionality and capabilities of his process. For this purpose in-process balancing based on a suitably configured instrumentation network is necessary. To make full use of the measurements the data has to be processed by data reconciliation methods. In the present work an earlier approach by Chmielewski et al. (2002) has been applied to solids processes. This paper shows how the selected approach can be adopted to the measurement and processing of distributed variables, e.g. particle size and densities. An optimal instrumentation with regard to investment cost can be found that ensures that all necessary data for the reconciliation problem can be collected. The application to solids processes is illustrated with the examples of a simple screening-crushing process and a hydrocyclone cascade.

Multiscale Simulation of Agglomerate Breakage in Fluidized Beds

“…The treatment of such streams in a fluidlike manner will cause a loss of information. For the correct handling of solids streams the concept of a transformation matrix is employed in the SolidSim and SolidSim-Dynamics systems. Therefore, the Cell-Average technique was not directly implemented into the simulation system.…”

“…These systems are employed to solve the energy and mass balances in all streams and to obtain the numerical solution of the scheme in an appropriate time. Especially for solids processes the systems for the steady-state and dynamic simulation have been developed in recent years. Here, on the scale of the global production process, the population balance models (PBM) are used for the description of the agglomeration or breakage processes.…”