SIMCET

SIMCET: Real-Time Process Control Training and PID Tuning Simulator

New and unexperienced process control, chemical and other engineers and DCS / PLC technicians, and fresh and past students often come to the control room and as a part of their job start to do plant step-tests, process control loops design and activation, and PID tuning and optimization. To do all these they need to have prior huge experience and high-level skills, which is often time-consuming and laborious to get. Also, they are often afraid of doing complex process control chain activation, making plant step tests and PID tuning changes.

SIMCET is a real-time PID tuning and process control simulator for practice and testing of system identification process control analysis and PID optimization skills. It allows everyone to practice how to correctly activate process control schemes, make plant step tests and tune a variety of PID loops on a simple personal computer. Tuning PID control loops in SIMCET will give you exact feeling as if you are tuning PID control loops in the real plant. The user can fearlessly change PID tuning parameters in real-time with no possibility of process or plant problems. The user can make PID process control loops unstable or very sluggish or even put them in manual or in auto.

With increasing emphasis on training, safety, reliability, and stricter government regulations and with provided real-time hands-on process control training and testing functionalities, SIMCET is expected to be a required software module in the modern control room environment. What normally takes years to learn in SIMCET can be experienced in less than a week and develops confidence quickly and easily.

SIMCET testing module provides randomly generated tests. As users tune the PID control loops, their final PID tuning values are compared to the best mathematical values. After completion of all tests, a detailed grade report is generated which can be used as a certification and qualification record and to allow the engineer, technician or students to be skilled enough for tuning of real PID control loops in the control room. The plant managers, supervisors and academia professors can conveniently keep records of the test grade sheets to keep track of engineers, technicians and students who are qualified to tune and maintain PID and advanced process control (APC) loops in the control room.

SIMCET has got more than 100 real-time process control examples of all typical and atypical PID control loops from all walks of chemical industry: chemical, petrochemical, paper, oil refining, compressors, turbines, distillation, heaters, reactors and many more.

Furthermore, the same tools can be used in academic colleges for teaching semester-based process control courses at both undergraduate and graduate process control curriculum and also for process control academic research.