IDCOM Hierarchical Control of an Oil Refinery Reactor

An IDCOM computer control application has proven quite successful at Gulf Canada´s Clarkson Refinery near Toronto. The predictive control algorithm is used for overall temperature control of a lube oil hydrotreater, the heart of Clarkson´s lube oil plant. The overall control scheme consists of first level distributed control with two supervisory computer control levels. Four distributed controller setpoints are manipulated simultaneously to achieve three targets at level two and one at level three. Operating limits are automatically enforced. The control system has operated continuously since late 1981. Documented benefits from closed-loop control annually exceed initial expectations.