joshi@wuche2.wustl.edu (Amol Joshi) (09/19/90)
An article in CHEMICAL ENGINEERING, August 1990 may be of interest to some of you. It mentions two fielded applications of NNs in the process industry and goes on to explain what NNs are to the practioners. Although the process industry is very conservative, it seems that it has caught on the neural networks wave. Considering the nature of the industry where productivity increase of even 0.5% could mean millions of $s, this is not surprising. p.19 Neural networks optimize chemical production.. Texas Eastman Co. has collaborated with MCC to develop an application where they are optimizing the amount an expensive chemical used as a raw material. The NN was trained with the historical data from operational records to develop a model of the plant. They claim to be saving almost a third on the raw material and also obtaining higher-quality final product. Texas Eastman plans to explore NN technology for use in all of their plants (of course!) p.37 features an article on NNs. It mentions the following fielded applications: At Olin Chemicals (Cheshire, CO) NNs are being used to predict trends in the prices of 33 petrochemicals, according to Buzz Woods, Senior Associate. The article also mentions some work going on at Shell Development Co. in adaptive process control. According to Wayne Jones, manager of advanced technology at Fisher Controls International Inc. (a major player in chemical process control), neural nets are suitable for modeling very slow processes with long time constants. (He implies that they don't work well with systems that exhibit quick responses. So an NN would not learn to control a compressor very well, for example. I would like to hear any comments on this statement of his.) The article reviews this technology favorably. According to the article, companies like Exxon, Du Pont, Mobil, Amoco, Foxboro, Rhone-Poulenc (the largest chemical company in France -which has now a major US presence), Nestle, British Petroleum and Unilever have shown strong inclination towards committment to this technology. Amol -- ------------------------------------------------------------ Amol Joshi | joshi@wuche2.wustl.edu Department of Chemical Engineering | Washington University in St. Louis.|