What I’ve Been Working On For Weeks
July 11, 2014 9:21 am Leave your thoughts
Hello everyone, what a busy past few weeks! I just finished a project that I have been working on for quite some time. My job was to create an energy monitoring screen that shows the current conditions of what is going on in a particular area of the mill. Like any sophisticated computer program, the learning curve was steep, but once I got the hang of using MOPS it was a breeze to create new components and edit existing ones whenever necessary. This project was great because it had the perfect combination of difficulty and creativity. The interesting thing about creating this particular monitoring screen was that there were no comparable screens to use as a template. This meant that I had to combine several different process and control (P&C) diagrams and use my own best judgment on which elements from each drawing to include. At first glance, the P&C diagrams can be quite overwhelming. They are a 2D representation of all the vessels, valves, pumps, and pipes that represent a certain area of the pulping process. Attached to the previously mentioned equipment are the control systems and instruments that ensure safe operating ranges in the mill which are represented in various ways on the P&C diagram. In total the mill has approximately 190 unique P&C drawings, the reason for having so many is so all the detail of the process can be included without cluttering the information. I completed this project using 4 main P&C diagrams. I am thankful to DMI as I now have an increased knowledge of P&C diagrams, which are common in any processing oriented company. I am also more familiar with the type of information needed to develop an effective monitoring screen.
I am now moving on to an equally interesting project that includes an overall capacity evaluation of the mill. The capacity report will ultimately show where the mill has constraints and how they can be addressed. The goal of the report is to help decide what type of equipment should be purchased to increase the daily production rate. This job seems like it will be a more comprehensive task as it spans the entire process from wood chip to pulp. I am sure this will be both a challenging and rewarding task. I look forward to keeping everyone who is reading up to date on my progress.