The Secret Formula for Operational Excellence in Chemical Sector

The chemical industry is expected to continue growing at a moderate but stable rate in the coming years given its importance for multiple sectors of the economy. The American Chemistry Council (ACC) has projected global chemical production to rise by 3.5% in 2025 (1). However, even with chemical production improving and margins reverting to average levels, the industry still faces challenges and uncertainty. In the next year, chemical companies will navigate many of the same challenges as other industries: evolving macroeconomic conditions, shifts in policy and regulations across regions, changing customer preferences, and advances in technology. 

In this context, chemical producers are operating in an increasingly challenging and dynamic environment. Therefore, when implementing new processes or reevaluating existing ones, control strategies —- through the implementation of technological innovations — ensure efficient and reliable operations. Attempts to adjust operating conditions on-site, through trial and error, often lead to downtime and increased waste, harming productivity and sustainability.

The High Value of the Technological Ingredient

The specialized expertise of staff is crucial to overcome the challenges and eventualities that arise in daily operation, but it is not enough; advanced technological tools must also be applied. Siemens gPROMS – an advanced process modeling environment – provides a virtual environment to validate processes under new modes of operation, simulating scenarios and allowing a better understanding of the impact of decisions in process design and operational strategies. Formal mathematical optimization techniques can then be used to find the combination of operational decisions simultaneously for the entire value chain and thus arrive at the best possible operation of the process. 

Reusing a process model developed during the design phase, or creating a new digital twin from scratch, gives engineers access to advanced predictive simulations. With gPROMS, engineers have a detailed analysis of the multiscale factors that influence system performance. Additionally, because this tool allows for a thorough exploration of the operating environment, it is possible to uncover new opportunities to optimize processes, improve overall system performance, and address bottlenecks.

This is just the beginning on the road to operational excellence in chemical companies. Today, the sector is also focused on transforming toward a low-emission industry, which requires both the technological adaptation of existing processes and the integration of recent technologies in process plants. 

With increasingly stringent regulatory requirements, these organizations are challenged to seamlessly track the entire product carbon footprint (PCF), and this can only be achieved through continuous data sharing along the entire value chain. With SiGREEN they achieve this conveniently and safely, being able to make sustainable decisions based on supplier-specific data, instead of industry averages (secondary data). If this platform is combined with gPROMS, companies can understand when and where emissions occur in their operation and, through the simulation of what-if scenarios and sensitivity analysis, optimize their processes by minimizing the carbon footprint with quantifiable results.

In this way, organizations in the chemical industry ensure that their business complies with the latest environmental standards, thus keeping their regulatory compliance in order. Beyond that, the technology also helps them build greater trust with different stakeholders (investors, regulators, and customers) by providing transparent and accurate data on PCF emissions. And as if that were not enough, by improving their sustainability ratings they obtain a competitive advantage, which is fundamental in the fierce market in which they find themselves. 

Towards Greater Integration, Real-Time Optimization

The gPROMS Digital Application Platform (gDAP) enables users to transform high-fidelity process models created in the gPROMS desktop environment into online applications that integrate with real-time plant data. This continuously updated plant model supports various digital process twins offering crucial information about current operations or facilitating decision-making for future scenarios. Its integrated approach helps users leverage model-based intelligence to improve operational efficiency, reliability, and profitability. 

By enabling a significant reduction in energy consumption and monitoring of CO2 emissions throughout the production process, digital twins are not only instrumental in the transformation of the chemical industry but will revolutionize production methods by changing the way AI-based systems interact with human operators. 

At Siemens, we believe that the importance of the digital twin will be even greater because with the use and offer of more and more digital business models, value chains will be much more connected between companies. In this scenario, the digital twin will break down the barriers between the different domains, serving as the basis of global collaboration in alliances and strategic ecosystems.

It is no coincidence that Markets and Markets (2) estimates a 2023-2032 compound annual growth (CAGR) of 39.8% for the digital twin market, reaching a value of US$259.32 billion globally. This growth responds to the value that digital twins offer to industries, by enabling the creation of detailed digital replicas of various industrial processes, assets, and systems, which drives overall growth. It is time for organizations and industries to take advantage of this technology and prepare to face the challenges of an increasingly complex digital world.

As time goes on, at Siemens, we continuously work to keep the digital twin moving forward and help merge the physical and digital worlds, adding more value to organizations with the flexible mix of intelligent and highly integrated applications and services; new levels of support and connectivity for knowledge-based workflows, and standardized communication mechanisms and decentralized linked data to ensure that relevant data is not lost.

Sources: 

1 - https://www2.deloitte.com/us/en/insights/industry/oil-and-gas/chemical-industry-outlook.html#endnote-sup-5 

2 -  "Digital Twins Market Size: Comprehensive growth analysis 2024", Markets and Markets.