Refinery operations monitoring and control

Refinery Operations Monitoring and Control describes a large gray area of management decision systems that lies between the foundation technologies of computer process control and linear program models for planning. There is no generally accepted name applied to such systems nor a vocabulary that is shared among people who conceptualize, develop, or use the systems. Nevertheless, there is a well developed family of technologies that have a long history of use and are evolving into new systems that hold great promise for significantly improving refinery operations. This paper uses the name ''Refinery Operations Monitoring and Control'', abbreviated ROMC, to describe systems that do any or all of the following: report information; calculate operating guides; or control pumps and valves for refinery equipment and operations outside the battery limits of individual process units.