Resource Efficiency Indicators for Real-Time Monitoring and Optimization of Integrated Chemical Production Plants

Operational decisions in the day-to-day business of chemical production plants can have a significant impact on the resource efficiency, but this is usually not transparent to managers and operators because of complex interactions in the plants and the lack of real-time resource efficiency indicators (RTREI). As a first step towards real-time decision support to improve resource efficiency, this contribution presents principles for the definition of resource efficiency indicators that capture the performance of a plant on shorter time scales. Guided by these principles, individual RTREI for a specific plant can be chosen. To assess the indicators, an evaluation framework was developed that helps to identify which indicators are capable of reflecting the total resource efficiency best. To demonstrate the approach, indicators for an ethylene oxide production unit that is operated at INEOS in Cologne are presented and compared to the currently used energy efficiency indicator (EnPI), showing that the new indicators are better suited to capture the operational efficiency of the plant.