Review of the Year

© TU Dresden

"May this good cheer, prosperity, health and success last throughout the next coming years”.
The future of process industries is green, digital and sustainable – this motto truly describes the heart of our chair this year and at the same time we are using this opportunity to briefly look at what we achieved together with our partners in 2022.
The research at the Chair of Process Control Systems, the Process Systems Engineering Group and the Process-to-Order-Lab (P2O-Lab) resulted in many new concepts and ideas. We are also very happy that the team is continuously growing, projects have been successfully completed and new ones started. This year you could see our results again in presence at several conferences and fairs, along with the practical demonstrators like the Safety Demonstrator from the P2O-Lab.

We arrived at the final stage with our two graduate colleges "Conducive Design of Cyber-Physical Production Systems" where we investigated qualification strategies for operator workplaces in future cyber-physical modular production systems and the "Mobility in Transition" where we researched sustainable energy and mobility concepts for software defined mobile supply chains.
The project ProRegional was completed in which a modular plant concept for the production of high-quality waxes based on biogas and renewable energies was developed.
In eModule, we investigated how to use modularization for the scale up of electrolysis plants. Here, we successfully finished our first work package laying the foundation of requirements for green hydrogen production.

KEEN is a lighthouse project with the goal of the far-reaching application of Artificial Intelligence in a wide variety of use cases from process industries. Together with other research facilities and solution providers we are already helping industrial partners to solve their problems using AI.
The goal of the ecoKI project is to ease the integration of artificial intelligence for small and medium-scale enterprises, we tested the first platform concept in, which provides building blocks for rapid realisation. In the following stages of the project, it is aimed to validate the suitability and efficiency of the ecoKI platform via application projects considering energy efficiency.
One of the applications of ecoKI project is our new project EnSort, which started in October 2022. In this project, energy-intensive aggregates in the highly complex sorting process of recyclable waste materials are to be optimized by increasing the degree of automation and the independent adaptation of the plant to changing input and output qualities. For this digitalization of the previously manually operated process, a model for the simulation of the sorting process is to be created as a digital twin.
Blue2035 offers an outlook on the future of the water industry by increasing efficiency through digitalisation. The project is coming to its end, but due to the fruitful results, the partners even decided to apply the developed digitalisation concepts right away.
In FABP, our project for the future of Automation Architecture for BioPharma Industries, we held together with partners a workshop at the ETFA 2022 regarding the trends and developments of automation.
In our H2020 MSCA project DigitAlgaesation, we continued our work in hybrid and data-driven modelling to monitor and optimize the productivity of algae cultivation plants. We are very happy that the PUEVIT GmbH joined the project as associated partner and is now providing expertise from industrial application and additional experimentation facilities in a bigger scale (103 L).
The RUBENS project started this year. Together with our industrial partners, we are developing a methodology to retrofit brownfield plants applying hybrid modeling, uncertainty estimation methods, the NAMUR Open Architecture (NOA) and Advanced Physical Layer (APL).
In our P2O-Lab as experimental environment for innovative concepts we intensively investigated flexible safety strategies. One highlight is the Safety Demonstrator.
In this Academia-Lab Industry cooperation, we gathered a great amount of experience for independent development and knowledge transfer in modular automation. The next exciting challenges are already waiting. We are currently carrying out the first steps in setting up an H2 process chain and will also operate algae reactors. Last but not least, we can look forward to the next topics and projects together.
The BOYSEN RTG goes into the next round with the topic: “Hydrogen Economy - Strategic Element of a Future GreenGas Deal”. Located in the cluster H: “Techno-economic modelling of hydrogen value-added networks” we want to have a multi-perspective look into the interconnection of individual value chains all around hydrogen production and usage.
Modularisation in the process industry is already state of the art. In the project REUNION, that is supposed to begin in February 2023, modules will be extended with Energy KPIs. This should not only increase the energy transparency for the plant operators, but also enable an energy-driven orchestration of modular plants.
We have disseminated the results generated in the projects with more than 10 publications1 and contributions to the standardization in various committees. Additionally, we integrate what we have learned together into our courses and even create digital teaching content, for example in the project LIME22.
We wish you a Merry Christmas and good health! We would like to thank you all for the excellent and trustful cooperation in 2022 and we are looking forward to discovering and treading new paths together with you in the new year 2023.