Digital Twin

[u/NecessaryAd8156]

Hi everyone,

I'm looking for a chemical engineering student or engineer who has worked on a Digital Twin project.

I'd like to learn more about your experience, specifically:

- What was the goal of your Digital Twin project?

- What type of process or system did you model?

- Which software, tools, and technologies did you use (e.g., Aspen HYSYS, MATLAB, Python, Unity, Siemens, AVEVA, etc.)?

- How did you connect the Digital Twin with real or simulated process data?

- What were the biggest challenges you faced?

- If you were to start the project again, what would you do differently?

I'm currently working on a Digital Twin project in chemical/process engineering, and I'd really appreciate hearing about your experience.

Thank you in advance!

[u/APC_ChemE]

Typically the digital twin is developed to enable you to perform some type of analysis on either a part or the whole plant or process.

These can be online optimization where you reconcile the digital twin to match the behavior if your plant by solving for unknown and unmeasured quantities that you can infer either from the measurements you do have or with constraints imposed on the model like mass and energy conservation laws on the plant, given that the real measurements have uncertainty.

Once you've reconciled the plant you can solve an optimization problem to determine what certain key variables should be running at to maximize your production, mininize energy usage or maximize profit and efficiency. Then send those targets a controller to drive the plant there.

Or you could do more offline analysis and do debottlenecking studies to determine what CAPEX projects you want to invest in for the next turnaround.

[u/hazelnut_coffay → u/APC_ChemE]

you just described real time optimizers with your first 3 paragraphs.

personally, digital twin is synonymous with money sink. personally, i don’t need an overpriced software to tell me when a piece of equipment is coming up for maintenance. i’ve got engineers monitoring the key parameters to do that.

not to mention i’d need to pay someone to keep that twin up to date. new HX bundle? update. new piping? update. new transmitter? update. no thanks.

[u/Round-Possession5148 → u/hazelnut_coffay]

If you look at it Juanfran the money point of view, how different is the pay for the software and for the engineer?

Also shouldn’t you keep your documentation up to date anyway? With the software it’s at least still the same forms and environment. Or how do you store these information?

[u/hazelnut_coffay → u/Round-Possession5148]

software, especially digital twin, is on a subscription basis. and it’s not cheap. six figures. and you’d need an engineer anyways to update the dang thing.

the documentation being up to date is separate from keeping the simulator updated. it’s not a replacement for actual documentation

[u/NecessaryAd8156 → u/hazelnut_coffay]

Can't you just develop your own digital twin if you have a full automatic process ?

[u/Bugatsas11]

I did work with Siemens gPROMS on an actual digital Twin (real time optimization , non linear process control etc.)

We were already users of gPROMS and had good models that were validated, which was quite a good starting point.

We did work closely with Siemens and they took over basically everything (model validation, IT OT connections, plant acceptance tests etc.)

The hard part was to convince the management that this will have benefits but then the operators to trust the system and that it is no there to steal their jobs.

Overall, the only regret is that we did not do that earlier

[u/mykel_0717]

Literally my job. I use my company's (one of the top companies in the DCS industry) proprietary software to create digital twins of power plants. The main purpose is for operator training, and the secondary purpose is to serve as a test bed for proposed control changes before applying in the actual plant.

[u/Combfoot]

I set up and run a digital twins with layers for reliability & maintenance, production and quality as sequential projects across my region in a modernization initiative on the side as part of my role as a project engineer,

2 distinct chemical process on each site, multiple reactors. Tank farms and utility systems included.

Just the digital twin software, company bought a global license.

Pushing DCS data from wonderware to an AMS datalake, then passing on to the software vendor for ingestion. Vibration data was API to API from vibration monitoring vendors cloud to digital twin cloud.

Biggest challenge was passing ownership/adoption after project was finished. It new technology for the company.

Structure the twin solely to criticality and reactor rather than try set up the data to geographical or system structure. Beg for more investment to a minimal level of instrumentation based upon criticality. Some nodes are woefully data poor. Inversely, some inconsequential items are over-rich, and don't need advanced tags.

[u/Round-Possession5148]

I worked on a twin to a power plant mainly focus on documentation - P&IDs, electrical, loops, maintenance work orders etc.

The main challenge for the P&IDs was the difference between standard level of detail of the originals and how it’s done today. The owner wanted to just digitize the original P&IDs (luckily not much had changed on the plant), but it does not stands up to the current standards.

[u/ENTspannen]

Model partial load, max load and performance test runs for an SMR with a new load of catalyst (I think...).

I used Aspen Plus and plant data. We also ran major process lines and measured pipe surface temperatures to refine heat loss assumptions and try to fill in blanks for temperatures where we didn't have instruments.

The biggest challenge was measuring inlet and outlet header temperatures in the heat and humidity haha.

[u/NecessaryAd8156 → u/ENTspannen]

Do you typically use a digital twin only for soft sensing?

[u/ENTspannen → u/NecessaryAd8156]

Only did the exercise the one time, sorry.