Information Integration Strategy Of Petrochemical Industry From The Multi-scale Perspective

The petrochemical industry plays an important role in the economy of our country. The research of integrated automation in the petrochemical industry is departed to two different fields, the Computer Integrated Manufacturing System (CIMS) and the Enterprise-wide Optimization (EWO). The former focuses on the IT realization based on the information sharing and integration, while the latter focuses on the computing methods such as optimization algorithms, artificial intellegence and so on. The two research areas deal with the same kind of plants while concerning different aspects, which results in the fact that neither of the two fields can share information with the other effectively. On the contrary, the integration of the two directions should be the highest priority.The theoretical research and practical application of the integration of the two directions is underway. The main approach is to integrate the complex models and algorithms of the EWO into the CIMS by using traditional IT tools. Nevertheless, this approach finds its break from the commonality and interoperability of software without regarding the intrinsic properties of the petrochemical industry.The material flow in the petrochemical industry plays a crucial role in the design of integrated automation system. From the view of management and control in the petrochemical industry, the material flow, which consists of manufacturing, transportation and warehousing, has multi-scale characteristic. This fact is a breakthrough point of the integration problem of CIMS and EWO because the material flow is the common object of the two and the multi-scale characteristic of material flow is also reflected in the research and application of them.In this paper, the concept of’multi-scale physical structure model’is first proposed based on the multi-scale topology structure of the real material flow and the logic material flow of the petrochemical industry. Subsequently, an information integration framework for material flow and manufacture units is designed for convenience of model maintenance and model synchronization. An information modeling method is then proposed based on the multi-scale physical structure model. To deal with the model variability during the application of the multi-scale model, a design scheme for multi-scale modeling tool is proposed which takes into account the availability of the modeling tool towards different users, various modeling formulation, multi-scale physical structure, and flexible interface.Finally, the proposed approach is applied to the Cyber-Refinery platform of Zhejiang University, an enterprise-wide optimization platform. The design method of the Cyber-Refinery platform is proposed, a Cyber-Refinery software platform is developed accordingly, which shows the effectiveness of the proposed information integration approach towards the integration of the petrochemical CIMS and the petrochemical EWO.