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process automation & control 2

Polymer process automation strategy

Paul Turner, Wang Kuiyuan, and Xu Xianwen explain PetroChinas unique advances in production capability and performance
THE global polymer industry is expanding capacity at an unprecedented level. It is estimated that by 2010 the combined worldwide capacity for polyethylene and polypropylene will exceed 165m t. China will be both a major producer and consumer of polyolefins over this period and Chinese petrochemical companies are investing now to make sure that their production facilities can meet the challenges that will be thrust upon them over the next five years. PetroChina is one of the largest companies in China and is a major producer of polyolefins in that region. The company has recently deployed advanced control technology on its Mitsui polyethylene plant in Daqing as part of a strategy to automate and optimise production process. As with all polymer manufacturers, PetroChina is faced with competing demands such as minimising inventories, maximising production whilst minimising production costs, ensuring customer satisfaction, and minimising the production of off-specification product. To keep inventories low the plant needs to be flexible enough to produce the right products, at the right time and in the right quantity. However, to ensure customer satisfaction, the company needs to be able to supply the correct products in the required amounts in a reasonable amount of time. The real bottleneck for polymer manufacturers is that in order to meet these demands the process needs to change product grades quickly and efficiently as each grade transition typically produces many tons of offspecification material that cannot be sold at a premium rate. Until recently, there were no commercially-available technologies supporting the automation and optimisation of product-grade transitions. The nearest that polymer manufacturers had got to this was programmed ramping of reactor concentrations between a set beginning and end point. This approach is neither optimal nor without error since it doesnt take into account the multivariable and dynamic nature of the process or the consequences of unmeasured disturbances. This approach also relies heavily on laboratory feedback a timely and therefore costly procedure. As a result of these limitations, polymer manufacturers typically run their processes through a fixed production cycle in an attempt to balance their inventories with the need to perform product grade transitions. As plants get larger and capacities increase, the losses incurred during transitions will only increase. These drivers led PetroChina to seek a solution that would enable it to automate and optimise the production process at its Daqing site. The company sought a solution that could maximise production rates, minimise process variability, increase yield and perform product grade transitions as quickly and efficiently as possible. The challenge with the Mitsui polyethylene process though is that transitions are not just simple, small setpoint changes in a single quality specification. The transitions performed on this process sometimes involve reactor configuration changes (parallel to series operation), which is one of the most challenging procedures to automate and optimise in the industry. This article describes the successful deployment of such a solution on PetroChinas Mitsui polyethylene unit in Daqing. vapourisation of hexane. The vapour from the reactor is partially condensed by the water-cooled condenser and flashed in the drum. The liquid from the drum is pumped back and mixed with part of the mother liquid from the centrifuge and transferred to the reactor. The vapour from the drum pressurised by the fan is split. The first stream is mixed with the gaseous feed to the reactor and the second stream is mixed with the vapour going to the condenser. The product from the reactor is a slurry containing the polymer, the solvent and the remaining monomer, co-monomer and catalyst. (Top to bottom) Figure 1: General business drivers aspenONE for The implementation of a comprehensive polymers APC automation and optimisation strategy on architecture this HDPE unit was driven by many factors. Figure 2: APC The project objectives were to maximise disturbance production yield, stabilise the reactor rejection
MES system Aspen recipe manager
Biased and unbiased product quality PV and SP based inferentials

ERP system

Aspen transition manager

Tunings, limits, targets

Inferentials Web based engineers view Web based operator interface

Lab records Accepted lab Acceptance flags Inferentials General controller data (eg Targets) ATM/RM details

Mitsui polyethylene process

In the Mitsui high density polyethylene slurry process, the raw material feed consists of a mixture of ethylene (monomer), co-monomer, catalyst and hydrogen (chain transfer agent). The mixture is bubbled into the well-mixed polymerisation reactor which is filled with hexane diluent. Fresh hexane is fed to the reactor with the Ziegler-Natter catalyst (TiCl4) and co-catayst. Mother liquid from the centrifuge and condensed hexane from the reactor vapour are also recycled to the reactor. In the reactor, the ethylene/comonomer mixture is polymerised in the adequately-agitated hexane phase to form polymer. As the polymer is insoluble in hexane, a slurry is formed. The polymerisation reactions are highly exothermic and the heat of polymerisation is removed via sensible heat to heat up the feeds, a water-cooled jacket and the

Apollo quality controller

Setpoints

Apollo lower tier controller

Setpoints outputs Measured Values tuning targets

Tuning targets

LIMS Historian OPC server DCS

H2/C2 disturbance rejection

APC response

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Item GCQ online ratio (%) QC online ratio (%) Parallel 2% (2200J, 5300B), Series 4% (5300E) 5% 5% 1 kg/tPE Target 5300B 92.68 88.17 5300E 96.78 85.71 2200J 95.17 73.64 The performance results of the nonlinear control system are recorded in Table 1. Table 1 lists the performance results for three product grades (5300B, 5300E and 2200J). It can be seen in the majority of cases that the achieved performance considerably exceeds the targets that justified the project. A few of the results were slightly less than the target (due to process constraints such as catalyst variability) but on average the results significantly exceeded expectations and delivered a high return on investment.

Yield increase

2.34

1.67

4.69

Catalyst consumption decrease H2 consumption decrease Ethylene lost increase

3.36 13.69 3.633 D-3201 36.37 26.5 17.43

7.64 21.895 2.774 D-3201 D-3221 D-3404 27.45 17.14 14.24

8.105 29.49 4.19 D-3201 D-3221 D-3404 22.5 7.12 17.08

product grade transitions

The installed advanced control system was also configured so that it could automate and optimise product grade transitions. One of the more challenging transitions is a parallel to series transition (2200J to 5300E) that involves significant changes in product quality and significant disturbances to both reactors. The key product quality parameter for this transition is melt index (a measure of polymer viscosity) which needs to increase in the first reactor and yet decrease in the second reactor. At the start of the transition the reactors are running in parallel. Part of the transition is to switch the first reactor so that it feeds into the second reactor (as well as maintaining reactor stability and achieving the new product quality grades as quickly as possible). Figure 3 displays the key reactor variables as the process transitions across the two reactors. The hydrogen flow (H2) can be seen to rapidly overshoot in the first reactor in order to increase the first reactor melt index as quickly as possible. Similarly the H2 in the second reactor undershoots so as to reduce the melt index in the second reactor and all the time compensate for the disturbances coming in from the first reactor. The key to this transition though is not just the controller. Both the quality controller and concentration controller are online during the transition (optimising the transition dynamics). However, this is all being orchestrated by the transition manager (a process sequencing technology). It is this piece of the solution that performs the step-by-step logic associated with the transition. Even the operators can be brought into the loop to perform manual procedures (such as reactor mode switching), all of which can be monitored and coordinated through the grade transition management system. The controller calculates the optimal setpoint trajectories the transition manager tells the controller exactly when it should start calculating them.

MI stability improved

15%

D-3221 D-3404

Table 1: Nonlinear advanced control performance results

Figure 3: Reactor conditions during parallel to series closed loop transition

Figure 4 : Product quality (melt index) during transition. Reactor 1 (left), reactor 2 (right)

operation (such as H2/C2 variability), reduce catalyst consumption, maximise production rate, minimise venting and reduce the amount of off-specification product manufactured during product grade transitions. The solution for this involved the deployment of AspenTechs aspenONE for Polymers advanced process control suite. This includes a full nonlinear model predictive controller, comprehensive recipe management and full process sequencing capability. A two-tier system was used for the dynamic control of the plant. The lower tier handles the faster reactor dynamics such as hydrogen to ethylene concentration ratio, reactor pressure and production split. The upper tier is in charge of controlling the bulk product qualities. Figure 1 displays an example of such a two-tier control system.
6 5.5 5 Reactor2 melt index 4.5 4 3.5 3 2.5 2 1.5
Key:

Figure 1 represents a fully integrated solution and the directions of potential data flow within that solution. The application at Daqing uses the same basic architecture, but configured to meet the specific drivers for the project.

lower tier control performance

The lower tier controller is charged with reducing reactor variability. Figure 2 displays an example of the nonlinear control system rejecting a disturbance. A disturbance enters the reactor that causes the H2/C2 concentration to drop. The controller immediately responds by increasing the hydrogen flow to the reactor thus eliminating the disturbance. This level of sustained performance considerably reduces the variability in the reactor and leads to more consistent product quality.
2200J to 5300E parallel to series transition

2200J to 5300E parallel to series transition 280 240 200 160 120 80 40 0 Time axis
Key: MI lab MI pred

Reactor1 melt index

MI lab MI pred

1 0 Time axis

product quality
It has been calculated that on this

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Items Yield increase Catalyst consumption decrease H2 consumption decrease Ethylene lost decrease Sum Table 2: APC benefits application the advanced control system was able to reduce transition times by 28% compared to the average operatorperformed transition. This improvement is driven by two factors. Firstly, the controller is online during the transitions performing a full nonlinear dynamic optimisation every minute. Secondly, the models that are utilised within the controller are very accurate. The accuracy is such that little or no laboratory feedback is required during the transition. This is typical of applications benefiting from this particular solution. As a result of the controller not having to wait around for laboratory feedback (in other words the models are driving the transition) then true predictive control is achieved resulting in significant savings in transition times. Figure 4 displays the product quality (melt index) during the transition. The left hand graph shows the reactor 1 product quality and the right hand graph shows the reactor 2 product quality. The stepped line is the laboratory result and the continuous line is the controller model for melt index. Average 2.9% 6.368% 21.69% 3.532 kg/tPE Profits per year (KRMB) 3200 195.6 83.3 1378.9 4857.8 Paul Turner is the solution director for all of AspenTechs polymer advanced control projects globally. He has a PhD in applied nonlinear control and is a primary developer of the Aspen Apollo control technology. Pauls background is predominantly industrial. Over the past 16 years he has worked for ICI Chemicals and Polymers, Shell UK and his own process control consulting company. Wang Kuiyuan graduated from Daqing Petroleum Institute, China in 1982; he is currently chief engineer of Petrochina Daqings Plastic Plant. Wang is senior engineer (professorial grade). Xianwen Xu is a senior APC service engineer for AspenTech, focusing on APC projects for polymer producers within the Asia Pacific region. He has extensive APC project experience on polymer technologies including Mitsui slurry HDPE, gas phase HDPE, and gas phase PP. a fully nonlinear control system applied to PetroChinas Mitsui HDPE unit in Daqing, China. The results described in this article show a solution that is capable of fully automating and optimising even the most complex of transitions strategies (including the parallel to series transition highlighted in the article). tce

financial benefits
Table 2 lists the benefits of the aspenONE polymer APC solution on PetroChinas Mitsui HDPE unit in Daqing. The benefits listed above convert to approximately $640,000/y on this 80,000 t/y process. In addition to this, transition performance was improved by 28%. The return on investment is less than 12 months.

conclusions
Polymer producers that can improve the productivity and responsiveness of their manufacturing processes can achieve a significant competitive advantage. This article presents the performance results of

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