Greg McMillan's paper at the 2019 AIChE Spring Meeting, "Compressor Surge Modeling and Control", received the best paper award from the Fuels and Petrochemical Division. Greg's paper on the material he covered in this presentation is attached. This presentation uses recent capabilities in Mimic v3.8 to model compressor surge in order to design better control strategies.
Mimic Compressor with Surge Object computes dynamic compressor response including hidden flow characteristics during surge
The knowledge gained from the model was critical to show the extreme jumps in flow caused by positive feedback on the hidden characteristic curve to the left of the surge point. The Mimic Compressor w/Surge object modeled this accurately and Mimic Future Value Block we used to detect the surge and identify the surge curve online.
Mimic Future Value Object computes future value to predict surge, capture surge curve points, and identify changes in compressor characteristic curves
Greg's ability to relate his personal practical experiences with surge at Monsanto from 1976 to his retirement in 2001 helped impress on the participants in the spring meeting on how scary the situation is and how important the digital twin is to design and verify the solution. A great contribution to the Emerson user community from a legend in process control!
View Greg's award-winning study here: 2019-AIChE-Spring-Mtg-Compressor-Surge-Modeling-and-Control.pdf