Episode 2: Sustaining Model Predictive Control performance over time
Model Predictive Control & Performance Partnership: The Next Era in Spray Drying Optimization
Achieve consistently optimized spray-drying results with MPC and ongoing Performance Partnership that keeps plants optimized year after year.
The automotive industry offers a useful analogy for understanding advanced process control in spray drying. The move from manual carburetors to automated direct fuel injection (DFI) in cars brought dramatic improvements in efficiency, consistency, and reliability. This was possible because every car rolling off the production line was identical, allowing a single control model to work perfectly across millions of vehicles.
Spray drying plants operate in a different reality. Every spray dryer is unique, designed for specific products, recipes, and equipment layouts. No two plants are the same. This individuality means each plant needs its own tailored process model for a Model Predictive Control (MPC) system to deliver optimal results. These custom-built models capture the unique dynamics of the dryer, enabling precise and stable control.
Why MPC excels in Spray Drying applications
Spray drying plants are complex: multiple inputs and outputs, long process delays, and tight operational constraints to ensure product quality and safety.
The challenge: sustaining MPC performance over time
MPC is powerful, but only if its underlying model remains accurate. Over time, equipment wear, sensor drift, or recipe changes will erode that accuracy, leading to less reliable control. Without updates of the model, it will lead to less reliable or even unstable control, at which operators will lose trust and revert to manual modes, running the dryer at less optimal conditions.
Maintaining MPC requires specialized process and control expertise, something many plants lack in-house. That’s why GEA integrates ongoing support and model maintenance into OptiPartner® for powder plants through the Performance Care program, ensuring plants stay optimized for the long term.
From APC to Process Optimization as a Service
The evolution of process control in manufacturing has always been driven by the need for greater efficiency, consistency, and adaptability. Traditional PID (Proportional-Integral-Derivative) controllers have long been the backbone of process industries, but their ability to manage complex, dynamic operations is limited, hence Advanced Process Control (APC) emerged as a solution.
1. Advanced Process Control (APC): Introduced to overcome the limitations of PID control, APC brings intelligent, real-time optimization to plant operations. Initially delivered as CAPEX projects with software installed on-site and maintained by plant personnel, APC delivered immediate performance gains. However, over time, changing process conditions, such as new recipes, equipment wear, and sensor drift, combined with limited in-house expertise the APC failed to sustain its performance over time.
2. Software as a Service (SaaS): The next step moved maintenance and updates to the supplier, allowing faster upgrades and reduced burden on plant staff. Yet, even with frequent updates, SaaS-based APC could not fully address process related changes like equipment aging, operator turnover, or evolving production requirements, which quickly erode model accuracy and effectiveness of the control system.
3. Process Optimization as a Service: Pioneered by GEA, this model goes beyond software delivery. It combines advanced control algorithms with deep process know-how and continuous expert support, ensuring systems adapt to new recipes, plant modifications, and changes in business goals. By focusing on sustained outcomes rather than one-time technology deployment, POaaS keeps spray drying plants performing at their peak, year after year.
Explore more insights in our eBook: Advanced Process Control or Process Optimization?
GEA OptiPartner® for powder plants: Performance Partnership in action
GEA OptiPartner® embodies Process Optimization as a Service, delivering tailored MPC models for each spray dryer, continuous monitoring, and proactive model updates from GEA experts. It blends advanced algorithms with deep spray drying know-how to keep plants operating at peak efficiency, even as conditions change.
For customers, this means:
- Consistently high product quality
- Reduced energy and utility use
- Higher throughput without new CAPEX
- Stable, predictable operations
This is Performance Partnership in action, focusing not just on technology delivery, but on sustained, measurable outcomes for your plant.
Episode 1: Spray Drying meets Automotive Innovation.
