Japanese engineering and software company Yokogawa and international oil company Shell have jointly developed a software suite that acts as a platform for advanced control and estimation, which accelerates and simplifies the process of designing, deploying and maintaining advanced process control (APC) applications.
This software suite merges Shell’s APC technology that it has acquired from operating its plants and the real-time control technology that Yokogawa has developed as a control system supplier.
APC systems improve product yield and reduce energy consumption by not only maintaining process values, such as temperature, flow rate and pressure within a set range, but also keeping them as close as possible to their optimal set points.
Thus, such systems are increasingly being used in, for example, refineries, petrochemicals plants, chemicals plants and natural gas liquefaction trains. This new software solution simplifies engineering and improves operability and maintainability.
Yokogawa partnered with Shell to develop the APC system because of Shell’s success with its own APC technology at its refineries and petrochemicals plants. The companies have been partners in the APC solution business since 1999.
Yokogawa considers Shell to be one of its most important customers and provides a range of solutions and products for the petrochemicals giant, including control systems, field instruments and cybersecurity solutions.