Plant-wide control: Eco-efficiency and control loop configuration

Since the eco-efficiency of all industrial processes/plants has become increasingly important, engineers need to find a way to integrate the control loop configuration and the measurements of eco-efficiency. A new measure of eco-efficiency, the exergy eco-efficiency factor, for control loop configuration, is proposed in this paper. The exergy eco-efficiency factor is based on the thermodynamic concept of exergy which can be used to analyse a process in terms of its efficiency associated with the control configuration. The combination of control pairing configuration techniques (such as the relative gain array, RGA and Niederlinski index, NI) and the proposed exergy eco-efficiency factor will guide the process designer to reach the optimal control design with low operational cost (i.e., energy consumption). The exergy eco-efficiency factor is implemented in the process simulation case study and the reliability of the proposed method is demonstrated by dynamic simulation results. (C) 2012 ISA. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.