This is where AI and machine learning have a key role to play.

These technologies
are rapidly emerging as tools that can greatly accelerate the ability to employ
plant data, both to calibrate first-principles models and to quickly create data-
based models of phenomena and processes. AI has the potential to lower the
expertise required to model process systems, but it must be combined with domain
expertise to create the real-world �guardrails� that make it work safely, reliably
and intuitively.

This combination enables what we call �hybrid models�, which effectively bring
together AI and first principles to deliver a comprehensive, accurate model more
quickly and without requiring significant expertise. And crucially, they serve as a
vital staging post on the way to the self-optimising plant.

Machine learning is used to create the model, leveraging simulation, plant or pilot
plant data. The model also uses domain knowledge, including first principles and
engineering constraints, to build an enriched model � without requiring the user to
have deep process expertise or be an AI expert.

The solutions supported by hybrid models act as a bridge between the first
principles-focused world of the past and the �smart refinery� environment of the
future. They are the essential catalyst helping to enable the self-optimising
plant.

Lessons learned about open automation from the pandemic

Malcolm Ross, vice-president, product strategy at Appian, discusses what life in
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Many companies today are reaping the rewards of a hybrid modelling approach.
Refining and olefin margins are closely related to plant planners� and operators�
ability to achieve monthly production that is as close to the plan as possible, and
gaps can usually be traced to out-of-date or inaccurate planning models. One of the
largest global refiners projects that the ability to generate up-to-date revisions
of these detailed reactor models as often as needed will deliver value over $10
million annually for a typical 200,000-barrel-per-day refinery. This technology is
especially timely as refineries contend with dramatic changes in the products they
must produce.