Applying Digital Application Platform to Optimize Steam Methane Reforming Process

The recent advance in measurement equipment, data transmission, and computational power enables digitalizing the process operation and constructing the digital twin. This implies that various existing model-based applications such as process monitoring, forecasting, decision support, and control can be applied to chemical processes with the most updated model in real-time. However, the systematic method of integrating the process data, model-based applications, database, and the user interface has not been well addressed. Therefore, this paper aims to fill this gap by proposing the workflow on applying the integrating framework called gPROMS Digital Application Platform that can receive and validate the process data, execute the various model-based applications, and visualizing the data and process results in a customized web-based user interface. For the case study, the integrating framework is constructed to optimize the SMR process in real-time. The gPROMS Process was used to construct the process model and the optimization problem was solved to find the optimal operating conditions that maximize the thermal efficiency of the reactor. The database stores the model inputs and outputs, and sends the signals to execute the model-based applications. Lastly, the web-based user interface was constructed to offer an environment to monitor the process status and execute the process optimization.