Blog

The Low-Carbon Industry

By Jose Ignacio Barbero from TECNALIA (www.tecnalia.com)

To limit global warming to below 2°C and to close as possible to 1.5 °C, the world must reach net-zero CO2-emissions by 2050 [1].

Transferring R&D results to other sectors. How can it be done? A COCOP use case

By Peter Craamer from MSI (www.msigrupo.com)

Research & Development is very expensive. Many millions of Euros are invested every year in R&D at European, National and Regional level. Through many programs research centres, universities and companies receive money to invest in resources which produce knowledge to be able to improve products / services so that companies can evolve with the final goal to improve the society we all live in.

Surrogate models: Improving the exploitation of your sophisticated models

By Norbert Link and Norbert Holzknecht from BFI (www.bfi.de)

Surrogate models are a technology to extract knowledge made by sophisticated software models and to accelerate the achievement of results made by such models.

COCOP: Surface Quality in Steel bars a route from the liquid Steel to the industry 4.0

By Asier Arteaga from SIDENOR (https://www.sidenor.com/es/

The steel is a mature material, it is produced in several forms and compositions optimized for products ranging from very thin flat sheets to big casted steel pieces. Each of the products has its own requirements and difficulties. There are requirements about chemical composition, mechanical properties, internal quality and surface quality among others. Concretely, surface quality refers to the absence of cracks in the surface.

Implementing Vendor-neutral, Scalable Communication in Industry

By Petri Kannisto from Tampere University (https://www.tuni.fi; http://kannisto.org/)

In the COCOP project, the aim is to enable the plant-wide optimisation of facilities that operate multiple unit processes. Such optimisation realises with software that apply mathematical methods to online process data.

Digimaturity Tool - is your organisation prepared for digital transformation?

By Olli Kuusisto from VTT (www.vtt.fi, @olliquu, https://www.linkedin.com/in/olli-kuusisto-83b56/)

There is much talk about digitalisation and digital transformation. They often remain as high-level concepts, or the issue is seen from a particular, fairly narrow angle.

Digital Twins

By Carlos Leyva from IDENER (www.idener.es)

During the last years, the Industry 4.0 concept has become more and more relevant in several industries as the manufacturing one.

Plant-wide process control in the process industry: barriers to implementation

By Rob Meier, Jani Jansson, Peter Craamer, Felix Bayon, Mikko Korpi, Antonius Schroeder and Michael Kohlgrueber (https://www.linkedin.com/in/robert-meier-b81169a/)

Coordinating Optimisation of complex plants and Advisory Tools

By Jørgen K H Knudsen from 2-control ApS (www.2-control.dk) and Teresa Gutiérrez from TECNALIA (www.tecnalia.com)

A modern plant often consists of several sub-plants, which are operated and controlled from separate controls rooms as described in [1]. It is an important task to coordinate the operation of these sub-plants in order to obtain an optimal solution at the wide-plant level.

How to involve business perspective in a research and development project?

By Jani Jansson from Outotec (https://www.linkedin.com/company/outotec/)

Quite often in the research and development work, the business potential of the idea is estimated before starting the work with full speed, but the business perspective is lost somewhere among the joy of creating something new and exciting.

Soft sensing: for critical and not on-line available measurements

By Fernando Boto and Zigor Lizuain from TECNALIA (www.tecnalia.com)

In the industrial environment there are processes that must work uninterruptedly and whose operating conditions are complex; in these cases, advanced supervision, control and fault detection systems are required to guarantee correct operation.

The COCOP implementation workflow

By Jouni Savolainen (@jsavolainen74, https://www.linkedin.com/in/jouni-savolainen-135840/)

One major development in the COCOP project is the implementation workflow. Or, in other words: what needs to be done when the COCOP concept is taken into use at a plant? To put it shortly, COCOP implementation is a process automation delivery project. With a twist or two.

Optimising Process Conditions: neural network based modelling

By Rob Meier (https://www.linkedin.com/in/robert-meier-b81169a/)

Plant(-wide) process optimisation using computational toolboxes can be based on a variety of approaches.

Knowledge management in COCOP

By Alexander Ebel (www.bfi.de)

Interdisciplinary projects such as COCOP require a continuous exchange of knowledge between project developers during the development phase. Information about data exchange protocols is particularly important, since these are frequently changed during development. At the same time, these protocols are used by several developers to implement parts of the solution.

Process control and optimisation: on commonalities between methodologies

By Rob Meier (https://www.linkedin.com/in/robert-meier-b81169a/)

Plant(-wide) process optimisation approaches using current methodologies have mutual differences but also clear commonalities.

The Beauty of Automation System Architectures

By Petri Kannisto and David Hästbacka from Tampere University of Technology (http://www.tut.fi)

In the modern world, industrial enterprises must constantly improve their efficiency for multiple reasons.

Online LCA models enable daily process optimisation in terms of environmental impacts

By Tiina Pajula from VTT (www.vtt.fi)

According to the International Energy Agency, the iron and steel industry are one of the biggest sources of CO2 emissions globally (IEA Clean Coal Centre, 2012). Copper smelter sites are big SO2 emission sources. Both manufacturing industries addressed in the COOCP project have potential to reduce their total CO2 and SO2 emissions by optimising their sub-processes.

System requirements specification for COCOP system ready – The use of Software Development methodologies in EU research projects

By Carlos Leyva from IDENER (www.idener.es)

A System Requirement Specification report (SRS) is a document that describes the system to be developed. It includes the set of requirements (functional, non-functional, …) that the system needs to fulfil in order to consider its execution complete.

A New Innovation Paradigm Based on Social Innovation

By Michael Kohlgrueber and Antonius Schroeder from Technische Universität Dortmund (http://www.sfs.tu-dortmund.de/cms/en/sfs_workingareas/index.html)

Social innovation focuses on changing social practices to overcome societal challenges, meeting social demands, and exploiting inherent opportunities in better ways than done before. It represents an understanding of innovation that goes beyond pure technological and/or business innovation.

Industry 4.0: key features and benefits

By Jose Ignacio Barbero from TECNALIA (www.tecnalia.com)

 “Industry 4.0” is about the fourth industrial revolution introducing the smart factory, where cyber-physical systems (CPS) monitor the manufacturing processes and make decentralized decisions. The term originates from a project in the high-tech strategy of the German government, which promotes the computerization of manufacturing.

Industrial Data Mining in process industry

By N. Link and N. Holzknecht (www.bfi.de or on LinkedIn and ResearchGate)

The continuous improvement of production processes takes a major part of the daily work for those responsible for quality and production in process industry. Here, Data Mining (DM) technologies, as a part of Data Analytics (DA), have shown their usability and suitability in many published applications. Furthermore, many powerful DM tools are available, both commercial and open source applications.

Optimising process operations – Model Predictive Control

By Jørgen K H Knudsen from 2-control ApS (https:// www.linkedin.com/in/jørgen-k-h-knudsen-8b903b2b/)

One of the most successful techniques during the last decade for optimisation of process units has been Model Predictive Control, MPC. As the name implies, MPC uses a mathematical model of the process to predict the future states of a process as a function of inputs to the process.

Data Analysis for optimized water processing as a roadmap to a smart city

By Peter Craamer from MSI group (www.msigrupo.com)

In 1900, just 15% of the world’s population lived in cities. Now that proportion is over 50%, and in 2050 it is expected to be more than 65% which is a lot of people. The world’s urban population is expected to surpass six billion by 2045.  As a result, cities will face numerous challenges in meeting the needs of their growing urban populations, especially when considering clean water distribution and waste water treatment. Technology can help with this.

Key Performance Indicator (KPI) and impact evaluation in distributed production systems – The importance of feedback

By Roger Ivaska and Peter Lingman (www.optimation.se/en)

In the design and maintenance of plant-wide control and advisory systems, measuring system performance is fundamental.

Digitalization in copper smelting - taking the next big step

By Jani Jansson and Mikko Korpi from Outotec (https://www.linkedin.com/company-beta/241781/)

The mining industry is well known to be challenged with declining productivity and ore grades, aging workforce and tightening regulations. It is also considered to be a decade or two behind some of the other heavy processing industries like oil and chemical industry for example.

Threats and challenges in the Special Bar Quality steel sector

By Felix Bayón from SIDENOR (https://www.linkedin.com/company-beta/651735/)

The Spanish Special Bar Quality steel sector, confronts a situation of loss of competitiveness compared to other countries and that motivated by three main reasons: a state energy policy that is unfavorable in view of the intensive character in power consumption of the Sector, a very restrictive environmental regulation and a cost of raw material and human resources in disadvantage.

Process control and optimisation in the Chemical process industry

By Rob Meier (https://www.linkedin.com/in/robert-meier-b81169a/)

In the process industry, even though this varies from one area to the other one, processes should run at maximum performance which, however, is not simply maximum throughput.

Efficient plant operation – a plant-wide approach

By Matti Vilkko (@MVilkko, https://www.linkedin.com/in/mattivilkko/)

The vision of the COCOP project:

“Complex process industry plants are optimally run by the operators with the guidance of a coordinating, real-time optimisation system” is based on strong mathematical background.

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