Search

• A cyber-physical model is proposed for plant-wide energy monitoring/diagnosis. • The proposed model describes the cause-effect relationship with in-depth analysis. • The distributed monitoring mechanism and statistics aims to detect energy states. • An abnormal variable is used to trace the root cause of the abnormal energy state. • The accurate energy monitoring and explicable energy diagnosis are analyzed. In the large-scale plant-wide chemical process, energy monitoring and diagnosis have a great impact on energy management and sustainable development. Most monitoring and diagnosis methods focused on the construction of the global model with process data, regardless of the meaningful process knowledge and in-depth analysis. Due to the multi-dimensional, correlative, and uncertain characteristics of the collected industrial data, it is laborious to obtain accurate and reliable energy monitoring and diagnosis results. To address these problems, a novel cyber-physical energy monitoring and diagnosis scheme is proposed in this paper. This scheme constructs a cyber-physical model based on process knowledge and data to describe the cause-effect relationships among the energy variables. For energy monitoring, a distributed monitoring approach is developed for energy state estimation based on the constructed monitoring statistics in both variable and residual spaces. For energy diagnosis, a faulty contribution degree index is further addressed and the corresponding root cause location strategy is discussed. The effectiveness and practicality of the proposed scheme are demonstrated via a numerical simulation example and practical ethylene oxide production. Two preset simulated faults and one practical process fault are used and all the abnormal states and root variables are monitored and diagnosed by the proposed scheme. The energy monitoring and diagnosis results provide great support for energy management and development in large-scale chemical plants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The electricity production sector has currently and for the past years been dominated by fossil fuel technologies, mostly coal, oil and natural gas. This has had various environmental consequences, such as increased gaseous emissions, soil and water pollution, global warming, as well as fossil resource depletion. As a result, the need to pursue Sustainable Development (SD), in order to reduce dependency on fossil fuel, to achieve Greenhouse Gas (GHG) mitigation and to reverse the effects of climate change has currently become imperative. SD is considered to be one of the most important factors for countries’ energy policy today and efforts, such as the ones materialized through the Kyoto Protocol mechanisms, are being made to promote sustainable electricity production technologies globally. Nuclear and renewable energy technologies both have the potential of contributing to the increasing global energy demands, while simultaneously lowering GHG emissions and also having a positive economic and social impact. In view of their differences and the ongoing nuclear debate, this paper aims to compare specific promising and emerging nuclear and renewable energy technologies in terms of their contribution to SD and prospects for deployment. The comparison showed that each technology contributes in its own way to SD and that political decisions, individual country energy policies and public opinion will probably determine the future deployment of each energy technology. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]