Press release: NAMUR-Award 2020

Every year, NAMUR presents the NAMUR Award for outstanding scientific university graduation theses (Diploma/Master and PhD) in the field of "Innovative Process and Operational Management".

The award is endowed with a prize of 2,000 euros for a diploma/master's degree and 3,000 Euros for a doctorate thesis.
In addition, the supervising chair receives 3,000 Euros for a winning diploma/master's degree and 5,000 euros for a PhD thesis, dedicated for the support and encouragement of young talent in the field of process automation.

As this year's NAMUR Annual General Meeting could not take place as a physical meeting due to the coronavirus pandemic, the presentation of the NAMUR awards took place online on November 5th 2020.

Dr. Simon Wenzel received the NAMUR Award for his doctoral dissertation entitled "Distributed optimization of coupled production systems via market-like co-ordination."

It was researched and written at the Faculty of Chemical and Bio-Engineering of Dortmund Technical University and mentored by Professor Sebastian Engell.

At the beginning of his thesis, Mr. Wenzel used the term "systems of systems", which describes a composite of individual systems forming a highly complex overarching system of the kind we find in highly integrated chemical parks.

With its approximately 60 chemical parks, Germany is not just the place this concept for success was invented, but also a global pioneer for the approach. In order to retain the benefits and expand the significance of the networking effect of chemical parks, it is important to understand how we can most effectively leverage the synergy effects of a major or multi-user base.

The complexity of these composite systems is described by the presence of different enterprises with standalone business units that define connected production through interlocking product and energy flows.

The efficient use of resources and energy must be dimensioned such that they assure all parties the maximum economic success.
But how can business partners work cost-efficiently and achieve maximum profitability if information is limited by confidentiality restrictions – or – how can they respond flexibly to market requirements when they are strongly and physically linked to and dependent on a partner, who in turn is subject to different objectives and restriction of its own?

This presents a location-wide optimisation issue which needs to be addressed, and this is the challenge Mr. Wenzel has taken up. He considers a chemical park as a micro-market or, as he puts it, "a complex interplay of people, algorithms and technology", in which the optimisation of the overall efficiency of the network can be realised by a co-ordination algorithm for distributed systems.

Mr. Florian Pelzer's Master's thesis "Concept Development for an Intermodular Safety Integrated System for Changeable Process Equipment" was also chosen for the NAMUR Award. It was researched and written at the Engineering Faculty of Pforzheim University and mentored by Professor of Engineering Dr. Mike Barth.

The thesis pays special attention to the functional security of plants designed and built as Module Type Packages (MTP). In such plants, consisting of MTPs, important factors to consider include:

• modular, flexible plants
• fast, multi-manufacturer integration of MTPs
• plug-and-produce
• time to market

All this must be considered under functional safety aspects with regarde to the security of a total modular plant, not just the safety of one MTP.

This gives rise to a method of consideration for inter-modular safety/security and/or for inter-modular safety-integrated systems.

The thesis focuses on the coupling of modules and the resulting risks, designated in this case as inter- modular safety. In other words, the question is: how can I perform a safety-related evaluation of the modular plant in its totality?

The thesis is specifically not concerned with the safety of the individual module, which is generally module-specific, not modifiable and defined by the specifics of the process engineering module characteristics. Instead, this is where the notion of intramodular safety comes in.

NAMUR warmly congratulates the award-winners.

NAMUR – Interessengemeinschaft Automatisierungstechnik der Prozessindustrie e.V.
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