Orion Engineered Carbons runs Carbon Black production sites all over the world operating multiple process equipment including rotary dryers and large-scale heat exchangers. To increase production line availability through improved reliability Orion is focusing on improving planning ability by damage prediction. To implement an early-warning system for equipment failures Orion successfully entered a partnership with Invasystems Digital (OSIsoft application partner). Orion team adopted Invasystems’ ProcDNA application and successfully coupled advanced data analytics and physics-based approach to predict the performances of heat exchangers and dryers. PI AF and PI Vision are leveraged to integrate process parameters and prediction results.
Historical process data such as temperature, flow and pressure for heat exchangers is used to train the data analytics model to predict leakages and plugging. The generated data analytics models are evaluated using additional historical data and are subsequently connected to PI AF for real time predictions. ProcDNA applies the model to current process data and provides continuous prediction of process indicators for heat exchanger leakage and plugging. The measured and predicted results are presented thru PI Vision.