Development of an intelligent Digital Twin for prediction and control of the process behavior via transient flowsheet simulation using the example of fluidized bed spray granulation

• Applicant: Professor Dr.-Ing. Stefan Heinrich
• Subject Area: Mechanical Process Engineering
• Term: since 2021
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 460241719

The process monitoring and control of production plants comes along with the ongoing demand for new developments to avoid unwanted process states and sub-specification production charges even though the processes in the field of particle technology have been used in industry for many decades. The main aim of this transfer project is increasing the efficiency of processes from chemical engineering by the development of an intelligent Digital Twin. This will be demonstrated using the example of the fluidized bed spray granulation process. The Digital Twin reproduces the state of the physical plant and predicts its future behavior, enable reliable control of the process. The intelligence of the Digital Twin is defined by the underlying models, which will be obtained by comprehensive data acquisition with continuous offline and online analysis methods. The high attention to detail of the models result in decision recommendations available faster the real-time, which allows predictions as well as process optimization steps. This is developed as a process-specific knowledge module that calls a flowsheet module, calibrates and consolidates the data. The results of the simulations are interpreted by soft sensors. A communication gateway will be developed that is responsible for the interaction between the simulation results and the digital process picture. The fluidized bed spray granulation model will be developed by experiments with a lab-scale plant at Hamburg University of Technology by application of statistical design of experiments. Unwanted process conditions will be deliberately adjusted in order to define the borders of stable process operation. The resulting model is implemented in the flowsheet simulation software Dyssol which has been developed during the DFG predecessor project (SPP 1679). By applying this software tool, the development procedure of the Digital Twin can be easily transferred to other processes and process chains of solids process engineering with minimal effort.Based on the future process states derived by the simulations, recommendations for actions will be implemented into the process control system of the plant. An optimization algorithm determines those parameters that result in a stable operation. The implementation into the process control system is conducted at the industrial partner, the company Pergande Group. Besides the operation of lab-scale plants, the transferability to larger plants will be demonstrated. The extension of current assistant systems will result in a competitive advantage for the distribution of new plants and is a unique feature in the field of fluidized bed technology for the industrial partner. In addition, it is assumed that the efficiency in the field of contract manufacturing can be increased by about 15 % due to a higher availability of the plants.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants (Transfer Project)
• Application Partner: IPT-Pergande Gesellschaft für Innovative Particle Technology mbH
• Cooperation Partner: Professor Dr.-Ing. Przemyslaw Komarnicki, Ph.D.