News & Events – PRONTO

ESRs @ The Great Exhibition Road Festival

Marta Zagorowska and Ruomu Tan, two ESRs from Imperial College London, attended the Great Exhibition Road Festival held in the South Kensington area, London, 28-30 of June. The festival is a three-day celebration of curiosity, discovery and exploration in the spirit of the Great Exhibition of 1851. Marta and Ruomu gave a talk titled “Day in the life of two chemical engineers” on Saturday as part of the “Day in the life” talk series. The series of talks aim at teenagers thinking about their future careers in sciences and arts. In the talk, Marta and Ruomu shared their experience and insights as researchers in chemical engineering with the PRONTO project.

ESRs at Great Exhibition Road festival 2019

PRONTO @ DYCOPS2019

Eleven ESRs attended 12th IFAC Symposium on Dynamics and Control of Process Systems, including Biosystems that took place 23-26 April 2019 in Florianopolis, Brazil. PRONTO had great visibility in DYCOPS. In total nine talks, including a keynote talk, were given by the ESRs, and a PRONTO special session titled ‘Equipment Condition Monitoring for Sustainable Process Operations’ was organized. The special session presented various results from PRONTO – from condition monitoring and fault detection to scheduling and planning of maintenance activities.

The quality of research in PRONTO was also recognized by the organizers. Ruomu Tan,

an ESR from Imperial College London (third from the left), was chosen to give a keynote talk on ‘Statistical Monitoring of Processes with Multiple Operating Modes (I)’. She was also one of three finalists for Young Author Award of DYCOPS 2019. Congratulations!

A list of ESRs’ works is below:

Bradford, E., Reble, M., Bouaswaig, A.E.F., and Imsland, L.S., Economic stochastic nonlinear model predictive control of a semi-batch polymerization reaction, 12th IFAC Symposium on Dynamics and Control of Process Systems (DYCOPS 2019).
Dalle Ave, G., Hernandez, J., Harjunkoski, I., Onofri, L., and Engell, S., Demand-side management scheduling formulation for a steel plant considering electrode degradation, 12th IFAC Symposium on Dynamics and Control of Process Systems (DYCOPS 2019).
Galan, A., De Prada, C., Gutierrez, G., Sarabia, D., Gonzalez, Predictive simulation applied to refinery hydrogen networks for operators’ decision support, 12th IFAC Symposium on Dynamics and Control of Process Systems (DYCOPS 2019).
Lucke, M., Mei, X., Stief, A., Chioua, M., and Thornhill, N.F., Variable selection for fault detection and identification based on mutual information of alarm series, 12th IFAC Symposium on Dynamics and Control of Process Systems (DYCOPS 2019).
Schulze Spüntrup, F., Dalle Ave, G., Imsland, L.S., and Harjunkoski, I., Performance-based maintenance planning for asset fleets, 12th IFAC Symposium on Dynamics and Control of Process Systems (DYCOPS 2019).
Stief, A., Ottewill, J.R., and Baranowski, J., 2019, Investigation of the diagnostic properties of sensors and features in a multiphase flow facility case study, 12th IFAC Symposium on Dynamics and Control of Process Systems (DYCOPS 2019)
Wu, O., Imsland, L.S., Brekke, E., Stefan M. Schneider, S.M., Bouaswaig, A.E.F., and Roth, M., 2019, Robust state estimation for fouling evolution in batch processes using the EM algorithm, 12th IFAC Symposium on Dynamics and Control of Process Systems (DYCOPS 2019)
Tan, R., Cong, T, Thornhill, N.F., Ottewill, J.R., and Baranowski, J., 2019 Statistical monitoring of processes with multiple operating modes, 12th IFAC Symposium on Dynamics and Control of Process Systems (DYCOPS 2019).
Zagorowska, M., Ditlefsen, A-M., Thornhill, N.F., and Skourup, C., 2019, Turbomachinery Degradation Monitoring Using Adaptive Trend Analysis, 12th IFAC Symposium on Dynamics and Control of Process Systems (DYCOPS 2019).

Further information can be found in http://dycopscab2019.sites.ufsc.br/.

ESRs @ STEM for Britain 2019

13 Mar 2019, Westminster, London, UK

Two ESRs, Ruomu Tan and Marta Zagorowska, presented their research at STEM for Britain 2019 in the Houses of Parliament at Westminster. STEM for Britain is an annual poster competition for early-career researchers working in the UK. The event provides an opportunity to communicate scientific results to a wide audience, including the Members of Parliament (MPs). Mark Field, the MP for the Cities of London and Westminster, visited Ruomu and Marta and their posters during the event.

Ruomu and Marta belonged to a group of approximately 35% of the best researchers and PhD students who have submitted their applications.

Ruomu’s poster: Developing data analytic techniques for monitoring industrial processes.

Marta’s poster: Managing wear and tear in compressor stations.

PRONTO meeting @ Acciai Speciali Terni

5/06-12.2018

During this two days meeting, ESRs and supervisors had the opportunity to visit the production facilities of Acciai Speciali Terni. The guided tour took the visitors through the different stages of the production process of stainless steel via the EAF-AOD route. An Electric Arc Furnace, an Argon Oxygen Decarburization reactor, a continuous caster and a hot rolling mill were visited. Additionally, ESRs focused on schedulling and stochastic programming topics gained insights of the italian energy market from experts in this field.An overview of AST plant can be obtained from here: http://www.acciaiterni.it/en/about-us/manufacturing-process/ Besides the management meeting, ESRs and Supervisors also participarted in a team building activity were the common passion for culture and european history were shared, enriched and enjoyed. This short activity was held in Spoleto, IT. A historic city 20 Km away from Terni.

Workshop on Optimization Under Uncertainty

03-09-2018 – The workshop on optimization under uncertainty at TU Dortmund was organized by the DYN group in the context of the European project PRONTO.

PRONTO: PROcess NeTwork Optimization for efficient and sustainable operation of Europe’s process industries taking machinery condition and process performance into account.

The PRONTO – ITN is an Innovative Training Network funded by the European Commission through its Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions. The goal of PRONTO is the integration of information about equipment condition into the process network operation, providing decision support to operators and managers to achieve an optimally energy and resource efficient network production.

The workshop

In the morning, Prof. Sergio Lucia (TU Berlin) and Prof. Rüdiger Schultz (Universität Duisburg-Essen) gave two seminars on Robust Model-predictive Control and on Discrete Optimization under Uncertainty. In the afternoon, the Poster Sessions provided an opportunity to present research results from the PRONTO project and the DYN group.

ESRs at SAFEPROCESS

SAFEPROCESS 2018 AUGUST 29-31, 2018, WARSZAW, POLAND

ESRs of the PRONTO project attended the 10th IFAC Symposium on Fault Detection, Supervision and Safety for Technical Processes. The conference hosted 200 registered participants in the following topics: fault diagnosis, process supervision, safety monitoring and fault-tolerant control as well as state-of-the-art applications and emerging research directions.
The ESRs presented the following works:

Stief, A., Ottewill, J. R., Tan, R., Cao, Y., Process and Alarm Data Integration under a Two-Stage Bayesian Framework for Fault Diagnostics
Lucke, M., Chioua, M., Grimholt, C., Hollender, M., Thornhill, N., On Improving Fault Detection and Diagnosis Using Alarm-Range Normalisation
Cong, T., Baranowski, J., Binary Classifier for Fault Detection Based on Gaussian Model and PCA

The website of the conference can be found at http://safeprocess18.uz.zgora.pl/

ESRs at ADCHEM2018

ADCHEM 2018 JULY 25-27, 2018, SHENYANG, CHINA

ESRs of the PRONTO project attended 10th IFAC Symposium on Advanced Control of Chemical Processes. They presented various results from PRONTO ranging from Online Alarm Flood Classification to Model Predictive Control. The Conference hosted more than 200 participants in the following topics: Model-based Control, Modelling and Identification, Scheduling and Optimization, Big Data Analytics and Monitoring, Batch Processes, Process Applications, Energy Processes and Control. During the conference the participants had the chance to visit the State Key Laboratory of Synthetical Automation for Process Industries at the Northeastern University.

The ESRs presented the following works:

Galan, A., de Prada, C., Sarabia, D., Gutierrez, G., González, R., Sola, M., Validation of a hydrogen network RTO application for decision support of refinery operators, ADCHEM 2018.
Schulze Spüntrup, F., Imsland, L., Asset fleet management in the process industry – a conceptual model, ADCHEM 2018.
Gutierrez, G., Galan, A., Sarabia, D., de Prada, C., Two-stage stochastic optimization of a hydrogen network, ADCHEM 2018.
Lucke, M., Chioua, M., Grimholt, C., Hollender, M., Thornhill, N., Online alarm flood classification using alarm coactivations, ADCHEM 2018.
Stief, A., Tan, R., Cao, Y., Ottewill, J. R., Analytics of heterogeneous process data: Multiphase flow facility case study, ADCHEM 2018.
Bradford, E., Imsland, L., Economic stochastic model predictive control using the unscented Kalman filter, ADCHEM 2018. (IFAC Young Author Award finalist)

The website of the conference can be found at http://www.adchem2018.org/

ESRs at PSE2018

PSE 2018 July 1-5, 2018, San Diego, California, USA

ESRs of the PRONTO project attended the International Symposium on Process Systems Engineering San Diego, California, USA. They presented various results from PRONTO ranging from Demand Side Management to model predictive control.

The following talks were given:

Borghesan, F., Thornhill, N.F., Chioua, M., Forecast of persistent disturbances in process systems using a k-nearest neighbor and a weighted k-nearest neighbor method, PSE 2018.
Leo, E., Engell, S., Multi-stage integrated electricity procurement and production scheduling, PSE 2018
Dalle Ave, G., Harjunkoski, I., Engell, S., Industrial demand side management formulation for simultaneous electricity load commitment and future load prediction, PSE 2018
Bradford, E., Imsland, L., Economic model predictive control of batch processes using parameterized control policies, PSE 2018

The website of The conference can be found on https://pse2018.org/

ESRs at ESCAPE2018

ESCAPE28, June 10th to 13th, 2018, Graz, Austria

ESRs of the PRONTO project attended the 28th European Symposium on Computer Aided Process Engineering in Graz, Austria. They presented interesting results on optimal batch scheduling, Demand side Management and degradation modelling.

The following talks were given:

A heuristic neighborhood search-based approach for the solution of resource-task network scheduling problems, Giancarlo Dalle Ave, Xing Wang, Iiro Harjunkoski, Sebastian Engell
A two-stage stochastic programming approach to integrated day-ahead electricity commitment and production scheduling, Egidio Leo, Sebastian Engell
Wu, O., Bouaswaig, A.E.F., Schneider, S.M., Leira, F.M., Imsland, L., and Roth, M., 2018, Data-driven degradation model for batch processes: a case study on heat exchanger fouling, European Symposium on Computer-Aided Process Engineering 2018 (ESCAPE-28).

The website of the conference and the book of abstracts can be found on https://www.tugraz.at/events/escape28/ .

PRONTO meeting in Ladenburg

Network meeting in Ladenburg

Host Institution: ABB Ladenburg, Germany

Date: 26th-28th June 2017

This three-days meeting took place in Ladenburg, Germany at ABB Corporate Research Center. The first day of the meeting the ESRs attended a course about Intellectual property rights, protection and management given by the Intellectual Property Department of ABB Corporate Research Center.

The second day of the meeting consisted of a session of presentations delivered by the ESRs on project progress. The session was followed by a project network meeting which included discussion on the project progress, solutions to various challenges as well as future actions.

The third day the participants visited the BASF Ludwigshafen production site where they had an excellent opportunity to see how some solutions developed within previous projects are successfully running in the real production environment.

More information about the BASF Ludwigshafen production can be found here.

Second Network meeting

Host Institution: Imperial college london

Date: 20-22nd December 2016

During the network meeting, the ChemEng Discovery Space allowed the ESRs within PRONTO to benefit from an unparalleled hands-on educational experience, with the four-storey high state-of-the-art carbon capture pilot plant representing a scaled-down chemical engineering plant- situated in the very heart of London. The centrepiece of the facility is the show-stopping ABB control room, accompanied by the installation of several brand new laboratories kitted out with the latest chemical engineering teaching equipment.

More information about the plant can be found here.