MODELING AND CONTROL ISSUES IN THE PULP AND PAPER INDUSTRIES

摘要

The pulp and paper industry, with significant capital investment in place, is striving to implement better process control and other process systems management practices in order to stay competitive. Decision making for improved performance, at all levels of systems management from a simple process to the complexities of a company structure, can be viewed as the implementation of optimization principles at different time scales. Information systems, process knowledge in terms of models and decision systems constitute the founding blocks of an effective process systems management structure. It is expected that as more process and systems understanding is incorporated into manufacturing decision practices the pulp and paper mills will perform closer to their inherent capabilities. Both in the traditional chemical engineering industries and in the pulp and paper industry we are facing similar challenges in process control mostly due to process complexities. These arise, among others, from the lack of fundamental process understanding, limited process measurement capabilities, unmeasured disturbances, constraints and robustness expectations. Recent developments in advanced systems approaches and their implementations in the chemical and petroleum industries provide the guidelines for continuing efforts to improve process behavior in the pulp and paper industry. Recently we studied the process modeling and control of continuous digesters, paper machines and stock preparation systems.