description
- In recent years, indicators for the environmental impact of products and production processes have been developed and are increasingly used in the communication of companies in the processing industries with the public as well as in the evaluation of alternative routes and for the decision on investments into new production facilities or revamp measures. In the MORE project, we will significantly extend the definition and the use of such indicators by • Defining real-time resource efficiency indicators that can be efficiently used in daily operations and are computed based upon the processing of real-time data that is available in the monitoring and control systems and from innovative analytical measurements • Taking the step from monitoring to improving resource efficiency by providing model-based real-time decision support to plant operators and plant managers. We will deal with resource efficiency as a multidimensional attribute with several indicators that measure different aspects of resource efficiency. The project is focused on large integrated chemical and petrochemical plants with many interconnected units. The real-time resource efficiency indicators and decision support tools will be developed exemplarily for this domain and will be adapted also to domains with similar production systems, e.g. sugar production, the pulp and paper industry, and metals production. Moreover the transferability to different sectors as e.g. the food industry will be investigated. The project will trigger standardization activities and input its result into the work of standardization bodies and disseminate the resource efficiency indicators and the real-time decision support methods to the whole process industry.