A new era in Plant Digitalization
Author(s)
Aleix Monteso
Magazine
Hydrocarbon Engineering, March 2024
Abstract/Summary
Today’s society is growing and learning in a new era, the age of computing. At the same time, year after year, new generations of central processing units (CPUs) and graphics processing units (GPUs) are coming onto the market, all linked to different machine learning (ML) algorithms that are gradually being integrated into society. Most of the algorithms in use today were created decades ago. They are becoming increasingly standardized and available to everyone. This is due to their open-source characterization and their ease of use thanks to the low-code philosophy. Even so, the current difficulty is not in the complexity of the mathematical formulation, but rather in how to integrate the mathematics into the solution. At the same time, the hydrocarbon industry is not lagging behind and more projects are emerging which utilize this type of technology. The industry is seeing that the technology can be profitable and applied quickly. This article discusses the digital twin (DT) applied in hydrocarbon processes. It will explain what these types of applications are and where they come from and will explore different types of this technology.
