Technical Benefits

Most operators use a variety of ways to monitor their plant’s equipment. Condition-based Monitoring, Oil Analysis and Visual Inspections are all commonly used. However, the monitoring of the actual thermodynamic performance of the equipment is less frequent and is often based on one-off manual calculations or using snapshot values in a homemade spreadsheet.

AMS Performance Monitor takes data from a plant historian system that contains large amounts of high quality historic data. This data retains its quality by using sophisticated compression and data storage algorithms, negating the requirement of reducing data and its value by averaging techniques.

AMS Performance Monitor utilises the rigorous model-based technology that form the basis of sophisticated Real-Time Optimization Systems which reap rich financial benefits to production facilities.

The use of Rigorous Model-based software within AMS Performance Monitor significantly contributes to the highly accurate results presented to the end-user. The usual spreadsheet technique takes no account of instrument drift or errors, bad data or the accuracy of the data used in the calculations.

Measurements are subject to error and, therefore, provide inconsistent information. Our software can detect and correct measurement errors, thereby providing a consistent and accurate data set. A model representing a specific item of plant can be updated whereby the software will be able to reconcile model calculated and actual plant values to ensure that the model continues to represent actual plant performance.

Elimination of instrument bias is achieved by a number of techniques including Normal Least Squares, Weighted Least Squares, Minimum variance and X² distribution.

A key differentiator of AMS Performance Monitor is the ability to refer back to design data and normalise data.

This technique uses data analysis to check on the calculations performed. Secondary data inputs and outputs are required for data validation.

Parameter estimation is the calculation of model parameters which may change with time, such as reaction rate coefficients, heat transfer coefficients, etc.

The efficiency of equipment is not just presented as a percentage. It refers to the performance that the equipment would be performing at not only if the kit was as at "Design", but also taking into account the ambient conditions.

AMS Performance Monitor also presents the cost of this deviation to the operator in terms of lost revenue due to the degradation of the equipment.