TABLE OF CONTENTS A virtual plant environment is essential for the testing of control systems and processes and the training of operators and engineers before and after startup. The capital cost associated with a new plant or a major plant expansion in the process industry often involves hundreds of millions of dollars. Any improvement in the design, engineering, construction, or startup that allows full operation of the plant to be achieved in a shorter period of time can result in significant savings to the investors in such a project. High-fidelity process simulations that can employ most of the equations and physical properties in chemical engineering are commonly used by many industries in the design of a process to examine and verify process performance under a variety of operating conditions. The technology is now available from companies to convert these steady-state models into high-fidelity dynamic models with true pressure and flow dynamics by the simple addition of volumes, pump curves and efficiencies, and pressure drops. Details on process equipment, control valves, and measurements are added so that the model provides a dynamic simulation of everything in the field and becomes a warehouse of plant knowledge and tools for training and testing with widespread access [10.1] [10.2].
High-fidelity dynamic simulations are used to test how the process and control system reacts during equipment failures, upsets, and startups [10.3] [10.4]. It provides an important learning tool for process and control engineers as well as operators [10.5]. The virtual plant can go...
