The process of extraction one element out of a mixture is full of challenges. To stay competitive, companies of oil, spirit and wood processing industries are constantly looking for ways to enhance and improve existing facilities. Not to mention environmental standards that become increasingly stringent and thus require transparency in operations and more precise production control.
A typical petrochemical or spirit plant uses single-series process, so its equipment has to run with high reliability and low failure rate for years. To further improve quality and usability, advanced process monitoring and control methods have to be applied. Digitalization is a significant enhancement for industrial facilities. Nowadays it allows to improve plant's flexibility and productivity.
Kosars'kyy Spirit Plant @Credit to UkrSpyrt
Nowadays data for analytics is becoming easier to acquire and process thanks to the IoT. Developers can quickly build, implement, and operate highly scalable cloud-based IoT applications. IoT is capable of providing functionality for the most common industrial scenarios:
- reliably of connecting and managing sensors and actuators;
- executing software update and rollback without system halt;
- managing and analyzing high volumes of production data.
Kettlebell system is tailor-made to support IoT business model and makes it easy to connect various sensors and actuators. Kettlebell is a preconfigured IoT solution that allows to quickly adapt to any unique distillation facility and its needs. Thereby, with a toolbox of various cloud and local services, Kettlebell is a technical foundation for a broad range of distillation solutions and projects.
Kettlebell Architecture Scheme
Kettlebell control and monitoring system targets the most painful distillation problems:
- quality control in production
- energy consumption
- human factor
One of the most common concerns is predictive production quality. Kettlebell control and monitoring system brings cross-functional collaboration between internal departments to a new level. With IoT system measurement, production data is continuously collected throughout all distillation phases. Instead of waiting for product's final inspection, system is capable to predict the product quality and quantity with known probability, which allows to focus only on required end result.
Of course, no software can change laws of thermodynamics that distillation process is based on. What IoT can offer is efficient usage of smart energy grids, stable energy consumption levels and reduced energy waste.
For example, IoT system deployed by General Electric had increased coal plant efficiency by 16%. This was achieved by automating oxygen flow regulation and fuel burning process.
Providing remote access to data and analytics to engineers and distillation facility operators will enable systematic quality improvements. Single mobile device with flexible and intuitive interface allows earlier issue detection, better equipment diagnostics and faster problem facilitation.
Engineer's online support availability is essential for a quick resolution of unwanted situations. Coupling remote access with new technologies results in an efficiency increase.
With IoT solution it is even possible to deploy a big data solution to support data-driven distillation facility and perform automatic resolution of potential issues.
All-in-all, enabling Internet of Things for distillation facility improves stability by preventing production incidents.
Kettlebell user interface
Built upon IoT principles, Kettlebell control and monitoring system enables data collection, analysis and translation into instruction for actions. Focusing on autonomous handling systems will boost distillation facilities flexibility and productivity in the future.
Components like Kettlebell system constantly move towards Industry 4.0, with strong focus on unique distillation facilities, expanding the future by delivering cutting edge solutions to each distillation plant.