A monitoring and proactive control system of a group of compressors

The problems of increasing the operation efficiency of a group of compressors consisting of two subgroups of the reciprocating machines of various capacities, as well as a screw compressor providing the technological processes of a large industrial enterprise specializing in production of the construction materials with compressed air, are considered. Due to the large number of the consumers that are poorly coordinated with each other, the features of the technology requiring short-term, but large, airflow; and operating modes of the electric drives of the reciprocating unit ensuring a minimum number of activations, automated monitoring of the energy parameters and proactive control of the compressors is provided. For this purpose, data-mining blocks are introduced into the structure of the control software and hardware system of the distributed architecture. The system registers the change of the parameters themselves, as well as the first derivatives, and then the obtained estimates are compared to the precedents available in the database. Considering the electric-energy consumption target functions of each compressor of the group calculated based on the statistics, as well as the selected precedent—the rules for activation of the machines for the current situation taking into account its dynamics—a control signal for the starting device is generated. Minimization of the specific electric-energy consumption by the total group is achieved by choosing the optimal combination of the operating reciprocating compressors with automatic connection of the screw compressor for more precise control of the process parameters.