The FMI Miami Smelter recently completed an entire control system upgrade. The 100 year old Smelter that also includes an acid plant, oxygen plant, and anode plant was converted from a Honeywell DCS to a Rockwell PAC solution that included using the Control Station LOOP PRO software. The commissioning engineers were able to successfully restart the site in part by using the LOOP-PRO software to tune the existing loops within the new control system. The Control Station software helped minimize downtime after the upgrade and improve system performance.

I had a temperature differential that was low and a flow that was high. So high in fact that it required 2 chillers to run. We used LOOP-PRO to tune the process. After tuning 75 loops, the temperature differential was at an industry standard and the flow was lower. It saved us maintenance time, energy, and productivity.

I needed a method of quickly tuning my differential pressure loops. We bought LOOP-PRO as a way to optimize and automate the process. Once we installed the software, loops that would have normally taken us 8 hours to tune, only took us 1 hour.

We were experiencing frequent problems with water injection pressure.  The controller regulating the process was overly aggressive and resulted in unacceptable oscillations – variations that were well outside of their target range.  Using csTuner we quickly corrected the problem.  It easily modeled the process – dynamics in spite of the oscillatory behavior and got the pressure under control.

We saw an immediate improvement in control over the plant’s desuperheater and other key processes.  Loops that were never tuned before due to their complexity were enhanced dramatically – the oscillations basically stopped altogether once we tuned them with Control Station’s LOOP-PRO.

Optimizing controller performance was a breeze with LOOP-PRO.  A single bump test was all that we needed to accurately model the complex dynamics of each control loop.  The software’s graphics made it easy to finely tune parameters for optimal responsiveness and control.  It easily reduced the time we budgeted for tuning by over 80%.  It’s a truly remarkable product.

We’ve used LOOP-PRO on a number of loops, including some tricky loops like controlling differential pressure cascaded to an exhaust stack flow. Loops like that are very slow and yet they have to be responsive immediately at start-up. Waiting for the flow or the pressure to come up isn’t an option. Even on difficult loops like that LOOP-PRO does the job.

We’ve invested in other tuning products, but they almost always failed to work. They couldn’t model the data well – or at all – because of oscillations or other process conditions. I really like LOOP-PRO as it can handle real-world application challenges.

We experimented with other tuning software packages to see if they could accurately model our batch dynamics.  In order for the tools to work properly, they required us to settle out our process and conduct bump tests starting from a steady state.  In the world of batch processes, that requirement is simply not realistic and it forced us to control the process manually.

LOOP-PRO was the only tuning package that could handle the dynamic characteristics of our batch processes.  It’s a highly intuitive technology, and we’ve successfully used it to model and tune several of our plant’s batch reactors.  The software’s ability to accurately model non-steady state process data is exceptional and has allowed us to dramatically reduce production cycle times.

Control Station continues to move forward with impressive product enhancements.  From an end user’s perspective, the new capabilities within Version 5 propel LOOP-PRO toward best-in-class status for optimizing the performance of PID controllers.

LOOP-PRO has produced excellent results for us.  The software has been applied widely at our mill and enabled my team to improve control with ease.  We’ve seen less variability in key processes which has resulted in increased production throughput.

We were struggling with a Vapor Recovery Unit and regulating the drives.  Control Station went thru the LOOP-PRO product and actually went into the field with us.  They showed us first-hand how to use the software.

Support is number one with us.  Everyone wants to look at the price, but when it comes down to it if you don’t have the support then you don’t have a product.  Control Station has been excellent.  I’ve called them at all hours – inconvenient times – and they get right back to me.

If tuning software requires a steady-state to function properly, then you’re usually better off flying by the seat of your pants to calculate tuning coefficients.  It’s LOOP-PRO’s integration with our existing Rockwell Automation assets and NSS technology that sets the product apart.

We recently evaluated LOOP-PRO against a variety of tuning tools and used LOOP-PRO to tune several interactive PID loops that would go unstable when outside a narrow range of operation. The results were evident: LOOP-PRO handled these difficult loops and allowed us to quickly stabilize control and to implement our MPC strategy. Additionally, LOOP-PRO cut tuning time by two-thirds, utilizing a repeatable and effective tuning method.

We experienced frequent problems with waste steam flow control – the  controller regulating the process was overly aggressive and resulted in unacceptable upsets.  Each upset forced us to disable the waste steam optimization and rely on more expensive medium pressure steam.  With csTuner we quickly identified and corrected problems with the controllers tuning parameters. Up-time of the advanced controls has been dramatically improved.