Galvanising inter-disciplinary cooperation in process analysis and control in the process industries

• David Littlejohn

Modern process analysis and control generates a lot of data, especially in the high technology “Chemistry-using” industries. Optimising production of chemicals, drugs, food etc. requires multiple contributions across different disciplines to make sure that data from in situ analysers are correctly obtained, and that the data are used along with other process information to allow intelligent performance monitoring and real-time control. The Centre for Process Analytics and Control Technology (CPACT) was formed in 1997 to provide a forum where the inventers, vendors and users of monitoring and control hardware and software could meet, exchange knowledge, do research and promote best practice. One of the thought-leaders and champions of CPACT was Professor Julian Morris FREng who sadly died in 2020. This talk will describe how the founding principles of CPACT have evolved to serve the current community of 45 international member organisations, and it will reflect on the contributions that Julian Morris made in the fields of multivariate statistical process control, process performance modelling and soft sensors. Given the increasing profile of the Industry 4.0 initiative, it is timely to reflect on how key components of this initiative are not new and were researched by Julian and his peers 20-30 years ago. David Littlejohn is the Philips Professor of Analytical Chemistry at the University of Strathclyde. He was a founding member of the Centre for Process Analytics and Control Technology (CPACT) and is currently the Operations Director.

Evening social: The conference site will be open throughout the event. Grab yourself a real-life drink (water, tea, coffee, beer, wine,….. whatever!) and meet and chat with other conference attendees in the virtual coffee area. You may also like to visit the poster hall and sponsor booths or leave your comments and suggestions in the Information Kiosk. The conference site will be open throughout the event. Grab yourself a real-life drink (water, tea, coffee, beer, wine,….. whatever!) and meet and chat with other conference attendees in the virtual coffee area. You may also like to visit the poster hall and sponsor booths or leave your comments and suggestions in the Information Kiosk.

Using AI to improve our understanding of waste-water processing

• Stephen McGough

Waste-water treatment is an energy intensive process leading to many environmental concerns. It is very important to remove chemical compounds such as oestrogen from the effluent before it can be safely released into the environment. With increased restrictions on the amount of certain chemical compounds which can be tolerated in the released water there is a need to identify how to efficiently remove enough of these compounds. Compounds are removed by bacteria which exist in the processing system. Current approaches to identifying the best bacteria are based around lab-based experiments on small volumes of waste-water or computer simulations of small volumes of bacteria. However, there is a disconnect between these experiments and what happens in a full-scale wastewater treatment plant. In this talk I shall explain how we’re using AI to scale up and make more realistic simulations of bacterial systems to meet new effluent restrictions. Stephen McGough is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Computing at Newcastle University. He heads up a team of data scientists working in the application and development of Machine Learning techniques to solve real-world challenges.