INDUSTRIAL VISION FOR PROCESS OPTIMIZATION

A commercially viable form of virtual reality in the chemical processi ng industry is being enabled by integration of several parallel techno logy revolutions underway in the fields of process modeling, large sca le optimization, reduced instruction set computing, expert systems, pr ecision measuring systems, smart instrumentation and new on-line analy sis technology. Capability to peer into many alternative future scenar ios with great precision re-defines process optimization to include op en and closed loop ''classical'' steady-state optimization, dynamic op timization, improved monitoring, tracking and post auditing of perform ance versus plans as well as off-line engineering, operations and main tenance applications. This paper summarizes recent commercial results in process optimization applications and provides some suggestions for new academic and industry work to support the vision that is supporte d by this paper.