Operating Envelopes for Better and Safer Processes

"The Curvaceous guys were telling us things we didn't know about our process in under six hours that we had just spent three months trying to discover."
Process Control Manager, Huntsman Petrochemicals (now Sabic), UK
 

“CRSV saves time by predicting optimum solutions without maths”

Senior Scientist, AstraZeneca, UK

"CVE cut our process losses by 40% and de-bottlenecked part of our process - all for zero capital cost."
Senior Process Engineer, Mallinckrodt Chemicals Ltd., UK

660% ROI in Carbon Dioxide Emissions study of a CHP plant

2% increase in Efficiency, false alarms reduced from 49% to less than 10% at the first attempt, Start-up time reduced by a factor of 6.  IneosChlor, UK

"I found CVE a really good way to quickly find answers to the plant managers questions. It was especially good because we have many process variables with tight constraints to be met." - Senior Engineer, pX Limited, UK

Geometric Process Control (GPC) is focused on reduction of variable operating costs in the process industries and shortening the product development time in pharmaceuticals and speciality chemicals by providing Faster Formulations. It is actually a very general multi-variable technology with wide application wherever data exists so call us if you are in another sector but think GPC might help you.

GPC is in use at over 120 large process sites worldwide in Oil Refining, Petrochemicals, Oil & Gas Exploration and Production, Pulp and Paper, Minerals Processing, Elastomers and Polymers, Oil Well Drilling, Metals, Commodity Chemicals, Pharmaceuticals, Glass, Speciality Chemicals, Power Generation, Cement and process applications in Defence and Aerospace.

If you would like to know how you could benefit from Curvaceous Software Solutions, please Contact us for more information or to discover how GPC can be used for:

• Operating Envelope Models for Batch or Continuous Process Control - multi-variable models including all variable interactions of the space where your process performs best. Stay in this space and keep your process working at its best all the time and not just some of the time. Easily created without maths and provide early detection of abnormal events too. Includes optimisation for secondary objectives such as least energy usage or minimum cost operation.
   

• Find your best Operating Box. You probably operate today using fixed operating limits defined on individual variables. Geometrically this is actually a box because you have ignored interaction between the variables. This is where you or we start using CVE's patented Box Query to quickly find a set of fixed limits that give the best yield of your objective and simultaneously tell which process variables should be improved first.
   

• Alarm Management.  All the problems of alarm systems begin and end with the values at which the alarm limits are set. But there is nothing in the chemical engineering literature about how to calculate alarm limits. GPC is the first and only method with a scientific basis for calculating both Alarm Limits and Alerts. We do it for many variables at once so it is much faster and the alarm limits are better because they are Consistent with each other. Users have found it cuts the time spent in Alarm Rationalisation projects by at least 20% as well as giving better alarms and a safer and more efficient process. It makes the subsequent Management of Change easier too and you wont have to repeat the Alarm Rationalisation project every 5-7 years either.
   

• Process Analytical Technologies (PAT) THE only complete solution taking you all the way to intrinsically safe predictive control of multi-phase, multi-stage batch processes.
   

• Spectral Analyser Support - wouldn't you like to see all of an NIR or Rahmann spectra, visually compare it with spectra for reference substances and then join the spectral data to process operating data so that you can see and discover the operational causes of new or changed peaks in the spectra? And all without needing any maths...
   

• Problem solving and process stewardship - addressing the needs of front-line process operations engineers for a quick and easy-to-use method to answer the everyday questions in a plant such as 'why isn't the process working as well as it did last week?' as well as checking that improvements already made remain made.
   

• Quality by Design (QbD) be able to demonstrate by showing visually how your process  knowledge is built into your product design
   

• Multi-Phase Batch Process Control. Batch processes were always difficult to analyse and control because there were so many variables changing at once and so many quite different sets of activities taking place in sequence. Users were not able to directly compare the many tens or hundreds of process variables and quality results across batches in a meaningful way let alone the reasons for the differences in performance of two or more supposedly identical reactors. Process control has been limited to forcing the trajectory of a single variable, such as reactor temperature, to follow the same trajectory as that in a ‘golden’ batch. That was the past. Now they can compare many batches and many reactors with ease and go on to build real-time control models without maths.
   

• Improving Six Sigma and similar Continuous Improvement Methodologies. Cover an entire flowsheet in one project instead of several and avoid sub-optimisation and project overheads - A 'No Equations' Six Sigma tutorial for Lean Manufacturing in process plants  (Six Sigma)
   

• Process Data Mining without maths for the Support Specialists. Explore datasets containing hundreds of process and quality variables and tens or even hundreds of thousands of rows entirely visually using CVE's sophisticated but simple to use Query capabilities to drill deeper than you have ever drilled before. Discover black holes, different operating Modes, unsuspected relationships yet be able to communicate your findings easily to anyone on your site.
   

• Faster Formulations - A new way to Formulate by giving the experimenter the ability to visualise and visually explore the Response Surface created from a set of Designed Experiments so that he can apply his domain knowledge to the full, save a lot of time and sometimes eliminate an experiment. GPC methods eliminate todays fitting of the surface with regression equations and the mathematically-skilled and time-consuming process of interpreting them.
   

• Quality Tracking
   

• Production reporting

One company                Curvaceous ^®

One technology                   Geometric Process Control (GPC)

Three software tools       Visual Explorer (CVE)
                                                   Process Modeller (CPM)
                                         Response Surface Visualiser (CRSV)

One Result                  Better and Safer Processes

Contact us now for more information