Evaluation of the Control Improvement Benefits for Campaign Profiles - Nitric Acid Production Example.

Control system performance significantly contributes to the overall process efficiency. Thereby, appropriate improvement measures are required to measure it. Many practical approaches use KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) in form of single numbers. These measures are further used to estimate possible improvement. However, there are situations where a single number cannot be used as the process efficiency measure. The performance of the nitric acid production installation is such an example. Instead of the single number, there is used a set of numbers in form of the campaign curve considered in the time domain. This problem is addressed and effectively solved. The proposed approach may be also used for other types of processes whose performance is non-stationary and is described by any type of the curve defined in time or any other variable domain.